nts through which our visitors passed.

They entered, then, by the same small vestibule at which we have before
been presented to the aged Medon, and passed at once into a colonnade,
technically termed the peristyle; for the main difference between the
suburban villa and the town mansion consisted in placing, in the first,
the said colonnade in exactly the same place as that which in the town
mansion was occupied by the atrium. In the centre of the peristyle was
an open court, which contained the impluvium.

From this peristyle descended a staircase to the offices; another narrow
passage on the opposite side communicated with a garden; various small
apartments surrounded the colonnade, appropriated probably to country
visitors. Another door to the left on entering communicated with a
small triangular portico, which belonged to the baths; and behind was
the wardrobe, in which were kept the vests of the holiday suits of the
slaves, and, perhaps, of the master. Seventeen centuries afterwards
were found those relics of ancient finery calcined and crumbling: kept
longer, alas! than their thrifty lord foresaw.

Return we to the peristyle, and endeavor now to present to the reader a
coup d'oeil of the whole suite of apartments, which immediately
stretched before the steps of the visitors.

Let him then first imagine the columns of the portico, hung with
festoons of flowers; the columns themselves in the lower part painted
red, and the walls around glowing with various frescoes; then, looking
beyond a curtain, three parts drawn aside, the eye caught the tablinum
or saloon (which was closed at will by glazed doors, now slid back into
the walls). On either side of this tablinum were small rooms, one of
which was a kind of cabinet of gems; and these apartments, as well as
the tablinum, communicated with a long gallery, which opened at either
end upon terraces; and between the terraces, and communicating with the
central part of the gallery, was a hall, in which the banquet was that
day prepared. All these apartments, though almost on a level with the
street, were one story above the garden; and the terraces communicating
with the gallery were continued into corridors, raised above the pillars
which, to the right and left, skirted the garden below.

Beneath, and on a level with the garden, ran the apartments we have
already described as chiefly appropriated to Julia.

In the gallery, then, just mentioned, Diomed received