to be seen in the museum at Naples. The pillars in the peristyle of which we have just spoken were encircled with garlands of flowers, which were renewed every morning. The tables of citron-wood were inlaid with silver arabesques; the couches were of bronze, gilt and jewelled, and were furnished with thick cushions, and tapestry embroidered with marvellous skill.

When the master gave a dinner party, the guests reclined upon these cushions, washed their hands in silver basins, and dried them with napkins fringed with purple; and having made a libation on the altar of Bacchus, ate oysters brought from the shores of Britain, kids which were carved to the sound of music, and fruits served up on ice in the hottest days of summer. While the cup-bearers filled their golden cups with the rarest and most delicate wines in the world, other attendants crowned them with flowers wet with dew, and dancers executed the most graceful movements, and singers accompanied by the lyre poured forth an ode of Horace or of Anacreon.

After the banquet, a shower of scented water, thrown from invisible pipes, spread perfume over the apartment; and everything around, even the oil, and the lamps, and the jets of the fountain, shed forth the most grateful odour; and suddenly from the mosaic of the floor tables of rich dainties, of which we have at the present day no idea, arose, as if by magic, to stimulate the palled appetites of the revellers into fresh activity. When these had disappeared, other tables succeeded them, upon which senators, and consuls, and proconsuls gambled away provinces and

empires by the throw of dice; and last of all, the tapestry was suddenly raised, and young girls, lightly attired, wreathed with flowers, and bearing lyres in their hands, issued forth, and charmed sight and hearing by the graceful mazes of the dance.

One day, when festivities such as these were in full activity, Vesuvius sent up a tall and very black column of smoke, something like a pine tree; and suddenly, in broad noonday, darkness black as pitch came over the scene! There was a frightful din of cries, groans, and imprecations, mingled confusedly together. The brother lost his sister, the husband his wife, the mother her child; for the darkness became so dense that nothing could be seen but the flashes which every now and then darted forth from the summit of the neighbouring mountain. The earth trembled, the houses shook and began to fall, and the sea rolled back from the land as if terrified; the air became thick with dust; and then, amidst tremendous and awful noise, a shower of stones, scoriæ, and pumice fell upon the town, and blotted it out for ever!

The inhabitants died just as the catastrophe found them-guests in their banquet-halls, soldiers at their post, prisoners in their dungeons, thieves in their theft, maidens at the mirror, slaves at the fountain, traders in their shops, students at their books. Some attempted flight, guided by blind people, who had walked so long in darkness that no thicker shadows could ever come upon them; but of these many were struck down on the way. When, a few days afterwards, people came from the surrounding country to

the place, they found naught but a black, level, smoking plain, sloping to the sea, and covered thickly with ashes! Down, down beneath, thousands and thousands were sleeping" the sleep that knows no waking," with all their little pomps, and vanities, and frivolities, and pleasures, and luxuries, buried with them.

This took place on the 23rd of August, 79 A.D.; and the name of the town thus suddenly overwhelmed was POMPEII. Sixteen hundred and seventeen years afterwards, curious persons began to dig and excavate on the spot, and lo! they found the city very much as it was when overwhelmed. The houses were standing, the paintings were fresh, and the skeletons stood in the very positions and the very places in which death had overtaken their owners so long ago!

The marks left by the cups of the tipplers still remained on the counters; the prisoners still wore their fetters, the belles their chains and bracelets; the miser held his hand on his hoarded coin; and the priests were lurking in the hollow images of their gods, from which they uttered responses and deceived the worshippers. There were the altars, with the blood dry and crusted upon them; the stables in which the victims of the sacrifice were kept; and the hall of mysteries, in which were symbolic paintings.

The researches are still going on, new wonders are every day coming to light, and we soon shall have almost as perfect an idea of a Roman town in the first century of the Christian era as if we had walked the streets and gossiped with the idle loungers at the fountains. Illustrated Magazine of Art.

I ween that when the grave's dark wall
Did first her form retain,

They thought their hearts could ne'er recall
The light of joy again.

They thought the tide of grief would flow
Unchecked through future years;
But where is all their anguish now,
And where are all their tears?

Well, let them fight for honour's breath,

Or pleasure's shade pursue,

The dweller in the land of death

Is changed and careless too.

And if their eyes should watch and weep,
Till sorrow's source were dry,

She would not, in her tranquil sleep,
Return a single sigh.

Blow, west wind, by the lonely mound;

And murmur, summer streams!

There is no need of other sound

To soothe my lady's dreams.

EMILY BRONTE.

II. DAVID SWAN.

While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan.

A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A temperance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening's discourse as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference were all one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan.

He had slept only a few moments, when a brown carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled easily along, and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of David's resting-place. A linch-pin had fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely a momentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the