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348 of the stately dames and damsels of old. In one room he sees the very clothes worn two thousands years ago,—the very food grains, eggs and vegetables as they were used by the ancients,—the very preserves and fruits which had been stored by careful Pompeiian housewives, ignorant of the great catastrophe which brought untimely ruin on their flourishing town and at the same time preserved these their handiworks for the curious gaze of future generations of men. The visitor as he inspects these curious relics of the almost forgotten past cannot help losing himself in contemplation, and almost seems to be surrounded by those long forgotten men and women who wore this clothing, ate this food, and stored these preserves in glass bottles for their brothers, their children or their husbands!

Leaving Naples on the 9th December I slept that night in Rome, and on the 10th I was in the maritime republic of Pisa. In the early dawn of modern civilization, Pisa took the lead of the Italian commercial republics in the tenth century of the Christian era. In the eleventh century, the fleet of Pisa was supreme in the Mediterranean, commanded the coasts of Corsica and Sardinia, Sicily and Africa, and helped the early crusaders in their memorable expeditions to the East. In the 13th century, as Genoa rose in power, the power of Pisa began slowly to decline, and in 1298 the fleet of Pisa was destroyed by its rivals. Still however the city maintained its importance until in the sixteenth century it was merged in Tuscany.