with nature, and the interstices of their incomparable columns were portals, as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what was Athens? What scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the temples of Hercules, and Theseus and the Winds? The islands and the AEgean Sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of Pindus and Olympus, with the darkness of the Boeotian forests interspersed? From the Forum we went to another public place, a triangular portico half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the edge of the hill overlooking the sea. The black point is the temple. In the apex of the triangle stand an altar and a fountain, and before the altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico. Returning hence and following the consular road, we came to the eastern gate of the city. The walls are of enormous strength and inclose a space of three miles. On each side of the wall beyond the gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much hiding-places for that which must decay as voluptuous chambers of immortal spirits. They are of marble radiantly white; and two especially beautiful are loaded with exquisite bas-relief. On the stucco wall that encloses them are little emblematic figures, of a relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals and little winged genii, and female forms bending in groups in some funereal office. The higher reliefs represent, one a nautical and the other a Bacchanalian one. Within the cell stand the crematory urns, sometimes one, sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found within; which are now, as has been everything movable in Pompeii, removed and scattered about in royal museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of all. The wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as it were like the steps of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures which adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them. I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude tho inferior to the Coliseum.