Pompeii had two and even three forums. The third was a market; the first, with which you are already acquainted, was a public square; the other, which we are about to visit, is a sort of Acropolis, inclosed like that of Athens, and placed upon the highest spot of ground in the city. From a bench, still in its proper position at the extremity of this forum, you may distinguish the valley of the Sarno, the shady mountains that close its perspective, the cultivated checker-work of the country side, green tufts of the woodlands, and then the gently curving coast-line where Stabiæ wound in and out, with the picturesque heights of Sorrento, the deep blue of the sea, the transparent azure of the heavens, the infinite limpidity of the distant horizon, the brilliant clearness and the antique color. Those who have not beheld this scenery, can only half comprehend its monuments, which would ever be out of place beneath another sky. It was in this bright sunlight that the Pompeian Acropolis, the triangular Forum, stood. Eight Ionic columns adorned its entrance and sustained a portico of the purest elegance, from which ran two long slender colonnades widening apart from each other and forming an acute angle. They are still surmounted with their architrave, which they lightly supported. The terrace, looking out upon the country and the sea, formed the third side of the triangle, in the middle of which rose some altars,--the ustrinum, in which the dead were burned, a small round temple covering a sacred well, and, finally, a Greek temple rising above all the rest from the height of its foundation and marking its columns unobstructedly against the sky. This platform, resting upon solid supports and covered with monuments in a fine style of art, was the best written page and the most substantially correct one in Pompeii. Unfortunately, here, as everywhere else, stucco had been plastered over the stone-work. The columns were painted. Nowhere could a front of pure marble--the white on the blue--be seen defined against the sky.