While waiting for the keeper to open the gate, let me relate as briefly as possible the history of this “City of the Dead,” as Sir Walter Scott calls Pompeii. This city (pro. Pom-_pay_-ee) was in a flourishing condition hundreds of years before the Christian era. It was founded by the Oscans, but soon fell under Greek influence and civilization. The Greeks, in turn, were subdued by the strong hand of the Caesars and Pompeii became a Roman town. In A. D. 63, there came an earthquake and a slight eruption of Vesuvius, which together destroyed the greater part of the city. As soon, however, as the earth ceased to tremble, and the mountain to smoke, the work of re-construction began. As in Chicago, after the great fire, the debris was removed, the city was enlarged, the streets were laid out with greater care and more regularity than before. Streams of gold now flowed in from every direction. The magician waved his wand, and lo! from the wreck and ruin of the past, there rose a city of palatial residences and marble temples. Art flourished. Every wall was pictured, every niche held a statue, every column was wreathed with a garland of sculptured roses. Fountains played, monuments arose in honor of Augustus and Nero, triumphal arches were flung across the principal entrances to the city, the marble forms of mythological gods filled the public squares and stood at every street corner. On the fifteenth page of “The Last Days of Pompeii” the author says: “Pompeii was the miniature of the civilization of that age. Within the narrow compass of its walks was contained, as it were, a specimen of every gift which Luxury offered to Power. In its minute but glittering shops, its tiny palaces, its baths, its forum, its theater, its circus, in the energy yet corruption, in the refinement yet the vice of its people, you beheld a model of the whole empire. It was a toy, a play thing, a show-box, in which the gods seemed pleased to keep the representation of the great monarchy of Earth, and which they afterward hid from Time to give to the wonder of Posterity!” This “miniature city,” rising from the midst of a luxuriant vineyard, stood on a beautiful table land and was girt around with a strong wall. Back behind the city, and close at hand, rose the awful form of that sleeping volcano. The ambitious vine had climbed up and spread its fruitful branches over the crater itself. Purple clusters of luscious fruit silently slept in the sunshine, high aloft on the mountain side. Just below the city, in front and to the south, was the glassy Bay of Naples covered with vessels of commerce, and gilded galleys of the rich. All in all, Pompeii and its surroundings formed one of the most pleasing pictures that ever greeted the human eye.