The public edifices in the city itself of Pompei, which was one of the least important of Italy, are yet tolerably fine. The luxury of the ancients had almost ever some object of public interest for its aim. Their private houses are very small, and we do not see in them any studied magnificence, though we may remark a lively taste for the fine arts in their possessors. Almost the whole interior is adorned with the most agreeable paintings and mosaic pavements ingeniously worked. On many of these pavements is written the word _Salve_. This word is placed on the threshold of the door, and must not be simply considered as a polite expression, but as an invocation of hospitality. The rooms are singularly narrow, and badly lighted; the windows do not look on the street, but on a portico inside the house, as well as a marble court which it surrounds. In the midst of this court is a cistern, simply ornamented. It is evident from this kind of habitation that the ancients lived almost entirely in the open air, and that it was there they received their friends. Nothing gives us a more sweet and voluptuous idea of existence than this climate, which intimately unites man with nature; we should suppose that the character of their conversation and their society, ought, with such habits, to be different from those of a country where the rigour of the cold forces the inhabitants to shut themselves up in their houses. We understand better the Dialogues of Plato in contemplating those porches under which the ancients walked during one half of the day. They were incessantly animated by the spectacle of a beautiful sky: social order, according to their conceptions, was not the dry combination of calculation and force, but a happy assemblage of institutions, which stimulated the faculties, unfolded the soul, and directed man to the perfection of himself and his equals.