Pompeii the most striking and interesting objects are casts of eight human corpses, and one of the body of a dog, fearfully twisted and contorted in the final death agony. The casts were obtained in 1863, by an ingenious experiment made by Signor Fiorelli, the present director of the excavations. While the soft parts of the bodies had decayed, their forms frequently remained imprinted on the ashes, which afterward hardened. The bones of a body thus imbedded were carefully removed and the cavity filled with plaster, and thus the figures and attitudes of the poor creatures in the death struggle have been preserved. On the third day after our arrival in Naples we set sail for Alexandria. The soft, bright skies of Southern Italy smile on us as we stand on the rear deck of the French steamer “Mendoza,” looking back at Naples as we slowly move down the bay, Vesuvius every now and then sending out a solemn, thunderous boom. We read with delight and amazement Richter’s marvelous word paintings in “Titan” of places which he never saw but with the mind’s eye. We sail out of the two encircling arms which are thrust into the blue waters, Ischia and Pozzuoli, the modern name for Puteoli, on the one side, Castellamare and Sorrento on the other. The rocky island of Capri is passed; we peer along the shore of the Gulf of Salerno hoping to get a glimpse of Pæstum and its famous temple, and on we go, the white gulls following us into the open sea. As a preparation for Alexandria we read Ebers’s “Egyptian Princess,” and like true Chautauquans re-read Charles Kingsley’s “Hypatia.” We are so unfortunate as to arrive at the end of our voyage just after dusk, and although the lights of the city are in view, we are forced to cast anchor and remain on shipboard another night. As the twilight falls upon us, the great spirits of the past begin to loom up in the sky—the Cæsars and Ptolemies; Pompey and Antony’s fascinator, Cleopatra; Euclid and Theocritus; Cyril and Apollos; the early Christian Church struggling with Greek learning and Jewish prejudice. Such is the atmosphere of the early ages of this ancient city. Under the Ptolemies and the Cæsars, Alexandria was a world-renowned city of 500,000 souls, adorned with the arts of Greece and the wealth of Egypt, while its schools of learning far outshone all those of the more ancient cities. At the beginning of the third century it began to wane and from the time it was taken by Omar in A. D. 641, its commerce and importance sunk rapidly. The discovery of the route to India by the Cape of Good Hope completed its ruin.