orchestra, rows of shelving seats made of cement or stone, aisles and corridors and lobbies, just as you find them in Wallack's or Drury Lane. The mask played a prominent part in these plays, no object being more common among the discoveries of Pompeii than the tragic and the comic mask. The plays were mainly from the Greek, and one can imagine and almost envy the multi The small theater which would hold fifteen hundred persons. amphitheater is at the outside of the town, and from the plans of it the writer studied, our party being too weary to walk the distance, it was a counterpart of the bull rings which you see in Spain at the present day. The amphitheater was the 192 popular place of amusement in Pompeii, as the bull ring is today in Madrid and Seville. It had accommodations for the whole population. In the center was an arena, and in the center of the arena an altar dedicated to Pluto or Diana, or some of the Jupiter species. It was here that the gladiators fought. Sometimes they fought with wild beasts who were introduced into the arena. We have representations in the museum of combats between gladiators and the bull, the lion and the panther. In some of these pictures the man is unarmed. Others show a gladiator in the attitude of a Spanish matadore in a bull ring, fighting a bear. The gladiator holds the cloak in one hand and the sword in the other, precisely as Señor Don Larzuello goes down the arena in Madrid to fight an Andalusian bull. There are frescoes showing how men fought on horseback, the men armed with helmets, spears, and oval bucklers about large enough to cover the breast. The most frequent pictures are those of gladiators on foot, wearing winged helmets, buskins of leather, on the thighs iron guards, greaves on the knees, the other parts of the body naked. You remember, no doubt, the picture of Gérôme, representing the arena-one gladiator prostrate, the other over him with sword extended, awaiting the signal from the emperor as to whether he would slay his foe. The signal was given by the spectators turning their thumbs if they want death. It was the wounded man's privilege to ask for life, which he did by raising his finger in supplication. In most of these pictures we have the raised finger in entreaty. Some show that the prayer has been refused, and the sword of the victor is at the throat of the victim. In this amphitheater the Christians were thrown to the lions, and the ashes still encumber the door through which the ghastly bodies of the slain were dragged after they had been "butchered to make a Roman holiday." It is in these remnants of Pompeiian splendor that we see the cruelty of the old Roman life. We turn from it with a feeling of relief, as it is not pleasing to think that such things ever were possible in a world as beautiful and refined as that surrounding Pompeii. We pass to happier scenes, glimpses of the REMNANTS OF SPLENDOR. 193 real life as it was two thousand years ago. The value of these ruins is in the truthfulness of what we see around us. We tire of temples, and fauns, and shows. How did these people live? We see that there was little or no poverty in Pompeii. If there was any Five Points or Seven Dials quarter it has not been excavated. This was a happy summer town, where people came to find their pleasures. There was the house of unspeakable shame, which the guide, with glistening eyes, pointed out to the General as the special object of interest to tourists. But our General had no interest in scenes of shame and vice, and declined to enter the house. We sauntered about from street to street, and looked at the house called the house of the Tragic Poet. It is here that Bulwer Lytton places the home of Glaucus, in his "Last Days of Pompeii." We pass a lake house where the mills are ready to grind corn, and our guide explains how it was done in the ancient days-"Pretty much," the General remarks, "as it is done in primitive settlements now." Here is an arcade which was supposed to be a market. Here is a subterranean passage leading to a dungeon. In the roof was a hole through which the judge announced to the prisoners their fate. We can fancy Christian martyrs clustering under these walls, and fearing not even the lions, in the blessed hope of that salvation whose gospel had only come from the shores of Galilee. We see ruined tombs and evidences of cremation, and house after house, streets and houses without end, until we become bewildered with the multitude and variety of sights. The impression made by the journey may be summed up in a remark of General Grant, that Pompeii was one of the few things which had not disappointed his expectations, that the truth was more striking than imagination had painted, and that it was worth a journey over the sea to see and study its stately, solemn ruins. The Italian authorities did General Grant special honor on his visit to Pompeii by directing that a house should be excavated. It is one of the special compliments paid to visitors of renown. The guide will show houses that have been excavated in the presence of Murat and his queen, of General Championnet, and Joseph II., of Admiral Farragut and General Sher man, and General Sheridan. These houses are still known by the names of the illustrious persons who witnessed their exhumation, and the guide hastens to point out to you, if you are EXCAVATING A HOUSE. an American, where honor was paid to our countrymen. When Sherman and Sheridan were here large crowds attended, and the occasion was made quite a picnic. But General Grant's visit was known only to a few, and so when the di rector of exca vations led the way to the proposed work, there were the General and his party and a group of our gallant and courteous friends from the "Vandalia." The quarter selected was near the Forum. Chairs were ar ranged for the General, Mrs. Grant, and some of us, and there quietly, in a room that had known Pompeiian life seventeen centuries ago, we awaited the signal that was to dig up the ashes that had fallen from Vesuvius that terrible night in August. Our group was composed of the General, his wife and son, Mr. Duncan, the American Consul in Naples, Commander Robeson, of the "Vandalia," Lieutenants Strong, Miller and Rush, and Engineer Baird, of the same ship. We formed a group about EXCAVATING A HOUSE. 195 the General, while the director gave the workmen the signal. The spades dived into the ashes, while with eager eyes we looked on. What story would be revealed of that day of agony and death? Perhaps a mother, almost in the fruition of a proud mother's hopes, lying in the calm repose of centuries, like the figure we had seen only an hour ago dug from these very ruins. Perhaps a miser hurrying with his coin only to fall in his doorway, there to rest in peace while seventeen centuries of the mighty world rolled over him, and to end at last in a museum. Perhaps a soldier fallen at his post, or a reveller stricken at the feast. All these things have been given us from Pompeii, and we stood watching the nimble spades and the tumbling ashes, watching with the greedy eyes of gamblers to see what chance would send. Nothing came of any startling import. There were two or three bronze ornaments, a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth, the grain of the bread and the fiber of the cloth as clearly marked as when this probable remnant of a humble meal was put aside by the careful housewife's hands. Beyond this, and some fragments which we could not understand, this was all that came from the excavation of Pompeii. The director was evidently disappointed. He expected a skeleton at the very least to come out of the cruel ashes and welcome our renowned guest, who had come so many thousand miles to this Roman entertainment. He proposed to open another ruin, but one of our "Vandalia" friends, a very practical gentleman, remembered that it was cold, and that he had been walking a good deal and was hungry, and when he proposed that, instead of excavating another ruin, we should "excavate a beefsteak" at the restaurant near the gate of the sea, there was an approval. The General, who had been leisurely smoking his cigar and studying the scene with deep interest, quietly assented, and, thanking the director for his courtesy, said he would give him no more trouble. So the laborers shouldered their shovels and marched off to their dinner, and we formed in a straggling, slow procession, and marched down the street where Nero rode in triumph, and across the Forum, where Cicero may have thundered to listening thousands, and through the narrow streets, past the |