Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/387

Rh that beside the big crater in the centre it has worked many small holes all around from which also it issues with great velocity. The mouths of these small holes are encrusted with sulphur. We threw a piece of crumpled paper into one of these small holes, and instead of going down it shot upwards with the velocity of a bullet through the force of the smoke issuing. Fresh lava rolls down from the crater almost to the foot of the hill on the Pompeii side.

Nothing which I had yet seen in the course of my continental tour had excited keener interest in me than the ruins of Pompeii, disinterred from the ashes and dust of eighteen centuries, and disclosing to modern nations the habits and manners and the daily life which men and women lived in ancient times! As I walked along the stone-paved streets, loitered among the ruins of ancient temples, forums or courts of justice, or examined minutely the courtyards and walls and paintings of private houses, as I surveyed the amphitheatre, the larger theatre and the smaller theatre, or walked past the public baths, the wine shops, and the fruit shops, or looked into the house of the poet Sallust or of the vestal virgins, I could vividly realize, without any great effort of imagination, the joyous and vigorous if somewhat coarse and cruel life which men and women lived in this very town, two thousand years ago. I could almost imagine their showy processions and public worship along these rough paved streets, their vociferous gatherings in the public places or near the stalls, the meetings of men in the