which may have been a refectory, were found
some of the remains of eatables, which are now in the museum. I
recollect noticing egg-shells, bread, with the maker's name or initials
stamped thereon, bones, corn, and other articles, all burnt black, but
perfect in form. The Temple of Hercules, as it is denominated, is a
ruin, not one of its massive fragments being left upon another. It was
of the Doric order of architecture, and is known to have suffered
severely by an earthquake some years before the fatal eruption. Not far
from this temple is an extensive court or forum, where the soldiers
appear to have had their quarters. In what has evidently been a prison,
is an iron frame, like the modern implements of punishment, the stocks,
and in this frame the skeletons of some unfortunate culprits were found.
On the walls of what are called the soldiers' quarters, from the
helmets, shields, and pieces of armor which have been found there, are
scrawled names and rude devices, just as we find on the walls of the
buildings appropriated to the same purpose in the present day. At this
point of the city, travelers who have entered at the other, usually make
their exit. The scene possessed far too great an interest, however, in
my eyes, to be hastily passed over, and on more than one visit, I
lingered among the deserted thresholds, until the moon had thrown her
chaste light upon this city of the dead. The feelings excited by a
perambulation of Pompeii, especially at such an hour, are beyond the
power of my pen to describe. To behold her streets once thronged with
the busy crowd, to tread the forum where sages met and discoursed, to
enter the theatres once filled with delighted thousands, and the temples
whence incense arose, to visit the mansions of the opulent which had
resounded with the shouts of revelry, and the humbler dwellings of the
artisan, where he had plied his noisy trade, in the language of an
elegant writer and philosopher, to behold all these, now tenantless, and
silent as the grave, elevates the heart with a series of sublime
meditations."

ANCIENT FRESCO AND MOSAIC PAINTING.

The ancients well understood the arts of painting both in fresco and
mosaic, as is evinced by the discoveries made at Rome, but more
especially at Pompeii. The most remarkable pictures discovered at
Pompeii have been sawed from the walls, and deposited in the Royal
Museums at Naples and Portici, for their preservation. Not only mosaic
floors