Its walls were about three miles in circumference; the streets were generally narrow, and paved with great flags of lava, which are furrowed by very deep ruts made by the wheels of the carriages that once passed busily along them. When the great hardness of the paving material is considered, this circumstance is very remarkable, and shows that the flags must have been laid down for a very long period, for the like is not to be seen in the streets of the most ancient City in Europe. [Illustration: PLATE X. FORUM OF POMPEII.] The Forum was a very elegant building, and if you look in the plate, you will see a correct representation of what remains of it. The Forums of ancient cities were not mere marketplaces, although provisions and other commodities were offered in them for sale; but they also contained places fitted for meetings of the people, and other public uses. You will thus understand how it was that a place not larger than Pompeii had such an extensive Forum. The names of the owners over the door of each house are still to be seen, and some of them are perfectly legible; and the colours of the paintings on the walls of the houses, are as fresh as if they had been painted yesterday. Some books have been found, but they are less perfect than those in Herculaneum, where a whole library has been discovered. The wood of the houses in Herculaneum is astonishingly perfect if you just scrape off the surface, and some linen has been discovered, of which the texture could be distinctly seen. There were also some vessels full of almonds, chesnuts, and walnuts, in a fruiterer's shop, which preserved their form entire. A baker lived near neighbour to this fruiterer, and in his shop was a loaf with his stamp upon it, "ELERIS Q. CRANI RISER." Not far off was an apothecary's shop, in which was a box of pills, and a little roll of some kind of medicine ready to be cut into pills, with a jar of herbs and other medicines. Another shop contained some sauces and olives, which were quite moist. These curious relics have been sealed up in glass, and placed in the Museum of Naples. There is a house in one of the streets of Pompeii, on one of the walls of which there has been scratched with some sharp-pointed instrument, a rude device like this: [Illustration]