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space to catalogue. Statues, endless statues, busts, paintings, sacred utensils, altars and columns-what a world of wealth and labor was expended upon the worship of these pagan gods! What a strange religion it must have been! Here are dancing figures, battles with crocodiles, devotees performing sacrifice to Priapus. Here, more apt than the others, to-day, at least, is Penelope discovering Ulysses. In the rooms of one of the priests of the Temple of Venus was a painting of Bacchus and Silenus, which must have inspired a frail kind of devotion. Around the Forum are pedestals on which were exalted in their day the statues of the men and the gods Pompeii delighted to honor. If we marvel at the extreme expense lavished on the Forum, especially as compared with the other parts of the town, we must remember that in those ancient days the Forum was where the Roman citizen passed most of his time. He spent his days at the baths, the theatre and the Forum, and, as a consequence, whenever you find any remains of the old Rome you find that the baths, the theatre and the Forum were the centres of display.

We might spend more time with the temples, but I am afraid the religion of Pompeii is not severe enough to inspire our awe. There is a temple to Fortune, built by one Marcus Tullius, supposed descendant of Cicero. There are temples to Isis and Esculapius-that of Isis being in excellent preservation. These priests were severer in their devotions than our friends who held out at the other establishments. They were celibates, who lived mainly on fish, never eating onions or the flesh of the sheep or hog. I suppose they were faithful in some respects, for the skeletons of two were found in this very temple, one attempting to break a door with an axe and another at dinner. one of the rules of this Order was perpetual devotion before the statue of the Deity, it is supposed they were at

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their prayers when the hour came. Let us honor them for that, and trust that even fidelity to poor, foolish Isis will not be forgotten in the day when all remembered deeds are to have their last account.

But almost as dear to Pompeii as her baths and forum were the theatres. Here is a building which is known as the school of the gladiators. All the evidences show that Pompeii excelled in gladiatorial displays. Why not? Her

RUINS OF THE THEATRE AT POMPEII.

people were rich and refined, and in no way could a community show its wealth so much as by patronizing the gladiators. The school shows that there were accommodations for as many as 132 in that building alone. Inscriptions show that in some of the public displays as many as thirty or thirty-five pairs of gladiators exhibited at one time. We did not visit the large amphitheatre, the small theatre being sufficient for our purpose. The ancient thea

tres were always open to the sun, this being a climate blessed with a sun. They were planned very much like our own. Where plays were performed there was a stage, an 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 multitudes who swarmed along these benches and witnessed the tragedies of Eschylus. There is room enough in this theatre (the one which General Grant and his party so calmly surveyed) to contain 5,000 people. Beyond this is a small theatre, which would hold 1,500 persons. The amphitheatre is at the outside of the town, and from the plans of it your correspondent 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 amphitheatre was the popular place of amusement in Pompeii, as the bull ring is to-day in Madrid and Seville. It had accommodations for the whole population. In the centre was an arena, and in the centre 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 which 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 matador 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