The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses, which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman, fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted, and in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegancies of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decoration is however questionable: they were fond of the gaudiest colors, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncolored; and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, &c. in perspective--a meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted, with a complacent pride in its ingenuity. But the house of Glaucus was at once one of the smallest, and yet of the most adorned and finished, of all the private mansions of Pompeii; it would be a model at this day for the house of "a single man in Mayfair"--the envy and despair of the coelibian purchasers of buhl and marquetrie. You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the image of a dog in mosaic, with the well known "cave canem," or "beware the dog." On either side is a chamber of some size; for the interior house not being large enough to contain the two great divisions of private and public apartments, these two rooms were set apart for the reception of visiters who neither by rank nor familiarity were entitled to admission in the penetralia of the mansion. Advancing up the vestibule, you enter an atrinum, that when first discovered was rich in paintings, which _in point of expression_ would scarcely disgrace a Raphael. You may see them now transplanted to the Neapolitan Museum; they are still the admiration of connoisseurs; they depict the parting of Achilles and Briseis. Who does not acknowledge the force, the vigor, the beauty! employed in delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the immortal slave! On one side the atrinum, a small staircase admitted to the apartments for the slaves on the second floor; there too were two or three small bed rooms, the walls of which portrayed the rape of Europa, the battle of the Amazons, &c. You now enter the tablinum, across which at either end hung rich draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn.[4] On the walls were depicted a poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement was inserted a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by the director of the stage to his comedians. [Footnote 4: The tablinum was also secured at pleasure by sliding doors.]