The houses were found filled with elegant furniture, the walls of the apartments adorned with beautiful paintings. Numerous statues, vases, lamps, and other elegant works of art, have been recovered. Many skeletons have also been found, in the exact positions in which the living men were caught by the deadly shower of suffocating ashes. The excavators came upon the skeleton of a miser, who had been attempting to escape from his house, and whose bony fingers were still clutching the purse which contained the treasure he loved. There were also found in the barracks at Pompeii the skeletons of two soldiers chained to the stocks; and the writings scribbled by the soldiers on the walls are still quite legible. In the vaults of a villa in the suburbs were discovered the skeletons of seventeen persons, who had probably sought refuge there, and been entombed. The stuff in which they were imbedded had been originally soft, but had become hardened through time. In this substance was found a cavity, containing the skeleton of a female with an infant in her arms. Although nothing but the bones remained, the cavity contained a perfect cast of the woman's figure--thus showing that she must have been imbedded in the substance while alive. Round the neck of this skeleton there was a gold chain, and on the fingers jewelled rings. In many of the houses the names of the owners over the doors are still legible, and the fresco-paintings on the inner walls are still quite fresh and beautiful. The public fountains are adorned with shells formed into patterns; and in the room of a painter there was found a collection of shells in perfectly good order. A large quantity of fishing-nets was found in both the cities, and in Herculaneum some pieces of linen retaining its texture. There also was discovered a fruiterer's shop, with vessels full of almonds, chestnuts, carubs, and walnuts. In another shop stood a glass vessel containing moist olives, and a jar with caviare--the preserved roe of the sturgeon. In the shop of an apothecary stood a box that had contained pills, now reduced to powder, which had been prepared for a patient destined never to swallow them--a happy circumstance for him, if he eventually escaped from the city. Very recently there has been laid open a baker's shop, with the loaves of bread on the shelves, all ready for his customers, but doomed never to be eaten. These loaves are of the same form as those still made in that country, and on being analyzed were found to consist of the same ingredients as modern bread.