them, each with his right hand towards the fire: it was the office of some to seize the firebrands of the altars, with which they sprinkled holy water on the numberless bystanders. Then began the prayers, the hymns, and lustrations of the sacrifice. The priests had laid the victims with their throats downward upon the altars; were ransacking the baskets of flour and salt for the knives of slaughter, and proceeding in haste to the accomplishment of their pious ceremonies;—when one of our company, who thought me lost, returned with impatience, and calling me off to some new object, put an end to my strange reverie. We were now summoned to pay some attention to the scene and corridor of a theatre, not far from the temple. Little more of its remains being yet cleared away, we hastened back to a small house and garden in the neighbourhood of Isis. Sir W. Hamilton (in his account of Pompeii communicated to the Society of Antiquaries), when speaking of this house, having taken occasion to give a general idea of the private mansions of the ancient citizens, I shall take the liberty of transcribing the whole passage. “A covered cloister, supported by columns, goes round the house, as was customary in many of the houses at Pompeii. The rooms in general are very small, and in one, where an iron bedstead was found, the wall had been pared away to make room for this bedstead; so that it was not six feet square, and yet this room was most elegantly painted, and had a tesselated or mosaic floor. The weight of the matter erupted from Mount Vesuvius has universally damaged the upper parts of the houses; the lower parts are mostly found as fresh as at the moment they were buried. The plan of most of the houses at Pompeii is a square court, with a fountain in the middle, and small rooms round, communicating with that court. By the construction and distribution of the houses, it seems, the inhabitants of Pompeii were fond of privacy. They had few windows towards the street, except where, from the nature of the plan, they could not avoid it; but even in that case the windows were placed too high for anyone in the streets to overlook them. Their houses nearly resemble each other, both as to distribution of plan, and in the manner of finishing the apartments. The rooms are in general small, from ten to twelve feet, and from fourteen to eighteen feet; few communications between room and room, almost all without windows, except the apartments situated to the gardens, which are thought to have been allotted to the women. Their cortiles, or courts, were often surrounded by porticos, even in very small houses; not but there were covered galleries before the doors of their apartments to afford shade and shelter. No timber was used in finishing their apartments, except in doors and windows. The floors were generally laid in mosaic work. One general taste prevailed of painting the sides and ceilings of the rooms. Small figures and