There has been an extraordinary display of erudition in the attempt to account for the endless repetition of Pigmy subjects in the houses of the Pompeians; but the learned and acute M. Champfleury "humbly hazards a conjecture," as he modestly expresses it, which commends itself at once to general acceptance. He thinks these Pigmy pictures were designed _to amuse the children_. No conjecture could be less erudite or more probable. We know, however, as a matter of record, that the walls of taverns and wine-shops were usually adorned with Pigmy pictures, such subjects being associated in every mind with pleasure and gayety. It is not difficult to imagine that a picture of a pugilistic encounter between Pigmies, like the one given at the head of this chapter, or a fanciful representation of a combat of Pigmy gladiators, of which many have been discovered, would be both welcome and suitable as tavern pictures in the Italian cities of the classic period. [Illustration: Vases with Pigmy Designs.] The Pompeians, in common with all the people of antiquity, had a child-like enjoyment in witnessing representations of animals engaged in the labors or the sports of human beings. A very large number of specimens have been uncovered, some of them gorgeous with the hues given them by masters of coloring eighteen hundred years ago. In the following cut is a specimen of these--a representation of a grasshopper driving a chariot, copied in 1802 from a Pompeian work for an English traveler. [Illustration: A Grasshopper driving a Chariot.] Nothing can exceed either the brilliancy or the delicacy of the coloring of this picture in the original, the splendid plumage of the bird and the bright gold of the chariot shaft and wheel being relieved and heightened by a gray background and the greenish brown of the course. The colorists of Pompeii have obviously influenced the taste of Christendom. There are few houses of pretension decorated within the last quarter of a century, either in Europe or America, which do not exhibit combinations and contrasts of color of which the hint was found in exhumed Pompeii. One or two other small specimens of this kind of art, selected from a large number accessible, may interest the reader. [Illustration: From an Antique Amethyst.] [Illustration: Flight of Æneas from Troy.]