“The doors are so low, that you are obliged to stoop to pass through them. There are some traces of Mosaic flooring, and the stucco paintings, with which all the walls are covered, are but little injured; and upon their being wetted, they appear as fresh as ever. Brown, red, yellow, and blue, are the prevailing colours. It is a pity that the contents of the houses could not have been allowed to remain in the state in which they were found: but this would have been impossible. Travellers are the greatest thieves in the world. As it is, they will tear down, without scruple, the whole side of a room, to cut out a favourable specimen of the stucco painting. If it were not for this pilfering propensity, we might now see every thing as it really was left at the time of this great calamity; even to the skeleton which was found with a purse of gold in its hand. In the stocks of the guard-room, which was used as a military punishment, the skeletons of four soldiers were found sitting; but these poor fellows have now been released from their ignominious situation, and the stocks, with every thing else that was moveable, have been placed in the museum; the bones being consigned to their parent clay. Pompeii, therefore, exhibits nothing but bare walls, and the walls are without roofs; for these have been broken in, by the weight of the shower of ashes and pumice stones, that caused the destruction of the town. “The amphitheatre is very perfect, as indeed are the two other theatres, intended for dramatic representations, though it is evident that they had sustained some injury from the earthquake, which, as we learn from Tacitus, had already much damaged this devoted town, before its final destruction by the eruption of Vesuvius. ‘Et motu terræ celebre Campaniæ oppidum Pompeii magna ex parte proruit.’—TAC. ANN. 15. c. 22. “The paintings on the walls of the amphitheatre, represent the combats of gladiators and wild beasts, the dens of which remain just as they were seventeen hundred years ago. The two theatres for dramatic entertainments, are as close together as our own Drury Lane and Covent Garden. The larger one which might have contained five thousand persons, like the amphitheatre had no roof, but was open to the day. The stage is very much circumscribed—there is no depth, and consequently there are no side scenes; the forms and appearance are like that of our own theatres, when the drop scene is down, and forms the extent of the stage. In the back scene of the Roman stage, which instead of canvas, is composed of unchangeable brick and marble, are three doors; and there are two others on the sides, answering to our stage-doors. It seems that it was the theatrical etiquette, that the premiers roles should have their exits and entrances, through the doors of the back scene, and the inferior ones through those on the sides.