PART II.

ZOOLOGY AND BOTANY.

Animals and plants are not scattered indifferently over the earth’s surface, but are grouped together in assemblages of different kinds. The animals and plants of the British Isles, for example, are wholly distinct from those of the West Indies, and these again from the East Indian kinds. Naturalists, after a long study of the distribution of organised beings, have been enabled to divide the earth’s surface into provinces, each characterised by its peculiar set of inhabitants. The assemblage of organised beings in each province exhibits, when viewed _en masse_, a general aspect, or _facies_, independent of its being composed, in part, of kinds of creatures different from those found in any other province. This facies depends on combinations of colour, sculpture, texture, and often minute and insignificant characters, when regarded separately, but when presented in coordination, becoming of importance through their constancy and their influence in determining the leading features of a fauna or flora, or both combined. Even when comparatively few of the characteristic animal and vegetable types of a province are brought together, within a limited space, some notion may thus be conveyed to the spectator of the _facies_, or aspect of life in that region. This has been attempted in the arrangement of the Geographical Garden in the Crystal Palace.

Organised beings are distributed over the earth and in the sea _horizontally_ and _vertically_. On their horizontal distribution depend their geographical life-provinces; on their vertical distribution, their arrangement in altitudinal and bathymetrical zones or belts. If we ascend any high mountain, we rise through successive belts of vegetation, each frequented by its favourite form of animal life. We are reminded during our ascent of the successive faunas and floras that we should pass amongst, were we proceeding from the mountain’s base to the pole. If the mountain be sufficiently high, we at length reach a region where all life ceases. So likewise in the sea--if we explore the depths of ocean, and commence our examination on the borders of the shore, we shall find that the animal and vegetable population of the waters are not dispersed indifferently through their depths, but occupy successive levels, or zones. If we go deep enough, vegetable life first disappears, and animal species become so few, comparatively, that we cannot but conclude that we are approaching a point beyond, or rather below which all is desert.

As yet, no attempt has been made in the Crystal Palace to display the zones of altitude, though it is quite possible to do so, by means of a miniature mountain encircled by belts of alpine vegetation, amid which the characteristic animals of the zones might be placed in relative order of elevated dwelling-places. This may be looked forward to, as a worthy object for carrying out hereafter. A slight and partial indication of the phenomena of distribution of marine animals in depth, is exhibited in cases representing the sea-population of a few regions; especially the British, the West Indian, and Australian seas. In these the spectator will observe that the law of distribution in provinces holds good among marine animals as among terrestrial. And if we regard the peculiar features of the contents of the West Indian case, contrasting it with that filled with British sea-animals, a striking example of the difference of _facies_, or general aspect, in a temperate province as contrasted with a tropical one, is too evident not to attract our notice. Differences of the same kind are displayed in the contrasts of form and colour presented by the birds of different regions, inclosed in the cases placed at intervals among the plants, and always in connection with the other illustrations of the portions of the globe to which they belong.

EASTERN OR OLD WORLD.

The Boar-hunt, one of the relics of the Great Exhibition of 1851, placed beyond this Court, must be accepted as a type of Europe--a region so familiar to all, that no space has been spared for its fuller illustration. The OLD WORLD Court is consequently devoted to African and Asiatic illustrations. The several provinces of Africa are fairly typified, but those of Asia, great and important though they be, have, for the present, an inadequate share of space assigned.

The southernmost portion of this Court is occupied by the south extremity of Africa; to this we pass southwards through the northern African provinces of Egypt and Barbary, brought into unavoidable proximity with the tropical countries of Asia. Central and Eastern Africa follow, the latter having affinities with Asia through Arabia.

The visitor when beside the North African section of the Court must suppose the proximity of Southern Europe, and by doing so, bear in mind the close affinity that exists between the mass of vegetation that he then sees around him, and the floras of Italy and Spain.

CENTRAL ASIA.

The yak and Ovis Ammon stand as representatives of the central regions of Asia. The former is a characteristic animal of Tibet, and does not thrive except at high elevations. Here, too, is placed the Bactrian camel. The vegetation among which these animals are grouped is mainly Himalayan, and may be regarded as representing the flora of the verge of this great province.

Beyond the northern bounds of the Central Asiatic region, we pass rapidly amid European types, mingling, as we proceed eastwards, with Boreal American forms. The vegetation, like the animal life, puts on a mixed aspect, and one of a transatlantic character. In the main, the Siberian fauna and flora are linked with those of eastern Europe.

The arctic portion of Asia presents the characteristic assemblage of polar animals, white bears, seals, walruses, narwhals, dolphins, gulls, and cormorants, whilst along the shores range reindeer, arctic foxes, lemmings, ptarmigans, and snowy owls; more inland, wolves and otters, with fur-bearing animals abound. This is the linking region of the Old and New Worlds.

INDIA.

The group of the Tiger-hunt indicates some of the zoological features of the low country and jungles of India and the warm regions of Asia. The tiger is indeed one of the most characteristic animals of the Tropical Asiatic provinces, as is also the Indian elephant. The one-horned rhinoceros, the Indian hyæna, humped oxen of various kinds, a few peculiar deer, the scaly ant-eater, the bonnet-monkey, the Hoonuman (_Semnopithecus entellus_), and the wanderoo, are all well-marked and conspicuous Indian mammals. Some of the larger quadrupeds are common to Europe and Africa. The birds of India are numerous, and often very beautiful.

By bamboos and orange-trees, and a few forms of vegetation capable of cultivation under the conditions and within the space of our Garden, a very slight indication indeed is afforded of the general Indian flora. But in the back-ground of the Indian group, the rich assemblage of Indian rhododendrons and azaleas, the _Juniperus recurva_ and the _Ficus elastica_, serve to represent one of the most beautiful floras in the world, that of the mountain ranges of India, whilst on its eastern-side, camellias, tea-plants, Carphon laurels, and magnolias exemplify the change in Asiatic vegetation with the great Chinese province.

NORTH AFRICA.

The portion of this continent, north of Sahara, west of the Libyan desert, and including the chains of the Atlas, is clothed with a very different vegetation, and peopled by a distinct set of land animals from those occupying the greater and more characteristic African regions. In many respects, it has more affinity in its natural history and features with the southern countries of Europe, especially Spain and Sicily, than with Africa. Even its most characteristic mammal, the Barbary ape, has apparently an indigenous stronghold in Gibraltar. The wild boar, genet, porcupine, and fallow deer, the last alone of its tribe in Africa, indicate European affinities, whilst southern relations are marked by a few forms of antelope and by the lion. Some small rodents are peculiar. The traveller passing from temperate Europe to Barbary, sees in the domesticated camel and many plants--the date-palm, the opuntia, and the agave--distinguishing and peculiar features of its landscape; yet none of these is an original native of the region. Even the date-palm belongs properly to the countries south of the Atlas. The truly characteristic plants--such as the carob, fig, and palmetto, are all of Mediterranean types and South European forms. The sea that separates Europe and Africa has an uniform population nearly throughout; and, in the main, is not more than a colony of the Atlantic.

NORTH-EASTERN AND EASTERN AFRICA.

Egypt is a truly African province, and is linked by many of its productions with Nubia, Abyssinia, and the countries that border on the Indian Ocean. The crocodile and the hippopotamus, now confined to the higher portions of the Nile, are essentially African types. The fishes of the Nile have close affinities with those of the rivers of the Senegal streams. Among them the polypterus is remarkable for its approach to the ancient and extinct forms of ganoids. From Sennaar, southwards, we find the elephant and one-horned rhinoceros. Monkeys, species of _Cercopithecus_, occur in the same region.

In the highlands of Shoa, the undulating surfaces of the table-lands are covered with green bushes of euphorbia; lions and hyænas are common. In the lower country of the Danakils, palms abound, with acacias and aloes; and the wart-hog, small antelopes and guinea-fowls, are among the animals. Crocodiles and hippopotami haunt the streams and marshes. On the plains are the Koodoo antelope and zebra; ostriches are hunted below the Galla country, and leopards and buffaloes abound.

Taking the vegetation from the north southwards, not a few conspicuous plants are distinctive of successive districts; thus, the date-palm, the papyrus, and the bean of Pythygoras may be cited for Egypt Proper; the doom, the coffee, and acacias to the more southern provinces. Some curious affinities with South African vegetation are indicated by Abyssinian species of pelargonium and protea.

There is a close relationship between the natural history of the Eastern African region and that of Arabia; so near, indeed, that in many respects we may regard these provinces as subdivisions of one great region. Many of the most striking plants are common to both, and the same may be said of not a few characteristic animals. The Red Sea, that separates them, proves, when its animal and vegetable inhabitants are explored, to be only a colony of the great Indian Ocean marine province, the most extensive of all the natural-history regions of the ocean, and the most varied in its contents. These are remarkable for brilliancy of colouring and beauty or singularity of shape and sculpture, as well as for the richness of the fauna in the number of generic and specific types.

WESTERN AFRICA.

Western Africa within the tropics constitutes in many respects one vast natural-history province, extending far into the interior and towards the eastern coasts. This wide-spreading region is capable of being subdivided, and the steaming districts along the coast from Senegal to Congo present numerous peculiarities that are not seen in the inland portions. These latter again vary considerably in features of surface, and the animal and vegetable population must change more or less accordingly. But throughout this portion of the African continent there range not a few of the large quadrupeds, and doubtless of the smaller ones and other tribes along with them. The African elephant, the hippopotamus, the two-horned rhinoceros, the phascochœrus, or wart-hog, the lion and the jackal, are examples; although the Great Desert cuts off the range northwards of several of them. Among birds, the ostrich and the _Vultur kolbii_ are instances.

The most conspicuous zoological peculiarities of this region are manifested by quadrumanous and edentate quadrupeds. This is a country of monkeys, and of very remarkable ones. The thumbless apes (_Colobus_) are concentrated here. The various herds of _Cercopithecus_ are chiefly members of this region: the mandrills are all belonging to it, and the baboons abound. The African orang-outang is a native of Guinea; and three species of chimpanzee are found on the same line of coast.

The edentata of this region are confined to the countries in the neighbourhood of the coast, and though few are highly peculiar. There are species of the genus _Manis_, the scaly ant-eater, or pangolin. In the presence of these extraordinary quadrupeds along the western shores of Africa we seem to have a relation with the New World shadowed out; one that is also indicated by a few analogies among the plants. At the same time, by similar indications, a relationship of analogy with the Indian region may be traced. Thus, there are curious resemblances between the flora of Congo, that of India, and of the islands of the Indian Ocean. These similitudes are the more remarkable since the physical features of the country between the western and eastern coasts are such as scarcely to admit of any continuity of like vegetation or animal population. With the flora of South Africa that of the west has but very slight connection.

A number of antelopes, though as we go northwards the species are less numerous, manifest the distinguishing feature of the group of African ruminants. In our group the harnessed and Isabella antelopes typify this character.

The vegetation of intertropical Africa varies considerably in different districts, on account of the striking difference in the mineral constitution of the soil, and the elemental peculiarities of the seaward and inland districts. Palms of several kinds are abundant along the coast countries, and among them the most prominent is the _Elais guiniensis_, a palm-oil species. As a group, however, although playing so prominent a part in the West African landscape, the number of kinds of palm is small, when compared with the vast number of individuals. The _Pandanus candelabrum_, one of the screw-palms, is a conspicuous tree. Mangroves clothe the sides of swamps and the deltas of rivers. Towards the inner country the great _Adansonia digitata_ or _Baobab_, the largest tree in the world, becomes frequent, and ranges westwards to the boundaries of Abyssinia. The great tree-cotton, or _Bombax_, is also characteristic. Among the herbaceous plants that range along the western coasts of Africa, one of the best known and prettiest is the _Gloriosa superba_. _Cinchoniaceæ_ and _Malvaceæ_ are among the tribes of plants that attain a considerable development.

SOUTH AFRICA.

There are few tracts of land on the earth’s surface so distinctly marked by zoological and botanical peculiarities, and by a striking aspect of fauna and flora as South Africa. Its mountains--and they attain considerable elevation, as much as 10,000 feet in some instances--its low grounds, sandy plains, and deserts called Karoos, if not everywhere adorned with a luxuriant vegetation, are singularly prolific in remarkable and interesting plants, and are the resorts of numerous quadrupeds, many of them of considerable dimensions. In its mammalia and its flowering plants we recognise the prominent and distinctive natural-history characteristics of the region.

One baboon, _Cynocephalus porcarius_, and a _Cercopithecus_, are the only monkeys of the Cape region, and though peculiar as species, are rather to be regarded as links of the fauna of the South African with the general fauna of Africa. In this light, too, must the carnivora be regarded, although numerous and prominent; for the most conspicuous, the lion for example, are common to a vast extent of the African continent. The hyæna genus, however, may be regarded as having its metropolis in this province. Some of the conspicuous pachyderms also appertain to the general African group, such as the elephant, the hippopotamus, the two-horned rhinoceros, the Ethiopic hog, and the zebra. Here is the country of the gnoos and other antelopes, of quaggas, lions following in the track; some of the antelopes may be seen in herds of hundreds.

Here we are out of the region of palms; nor are large trees of any kind very distinctive of the South African flora. There are no vast forests, arborescent plants are scarce, but instead, there are great tracts of bush, composed, in the Caffrarian districts, for the most part of succulent and thorny shrubs; leafless columnar euphorbias, some of them shaped like great candelabra and occasionally towering to thirty or forty feet, and fleshy aloes with threatening weapon-like leaves and tall standards of handsome flowers, give a strange and bizarre aspect to the Bush-country vegetation, and cover with prickly thickets the steep sides of the ravines that furrow and separate the long flat ridges of hills. Here grow the _Zamia horrida_, the crane-like Strelitzia, prickly kinds of acacia, everlasting-flowers in great variety, and ice-plants. One of the latter, the _Mesembryanthemum edule_, or Hottentot fig, is the only native fruit, and a bad one at best.

The mention of Cape plants at once suggests to the lover of flowers a number of beautiful natives of the South African region: Cape lilies, various sorts of corn-flags, ixias, lobelias, oxalidiæ, peculiar orchids, pelargoniums, diosmeas, polygalas, and heaths, of the last in wondrous variety. The curious little pachydermatous quadruped, _Hyrax capensis_, is a specific peculiarity; so also is the quagga. It is the group of the hollow-formed ruminants that give the grand distinguishing feature to the South African fauna. The beautiful family of antelopes attains its maximum here, nearly one half of the total number of species being South African. The gnoo, the eland, the harte-beest and spring-bok, are some of those most familiar on account of their dimensions or beauty: the abundance of antelopes compensates for the absence of deer. The Cape buffalo (_Bos caffer_) is another distinctive ruminant; and the giraffe, though ranging far to the north, is a conspicuous member of the southern fauna. The sand-flats around the Cape are bored by peculiar moles of the genus Bathyergus, and one of the most curious of African animals, the Cape ant-eater, _Orycteropus capensis_, one of the few members of its order existing in the Old World, is confined to the province from which it derives its specific appellation. The ornithological peculiarities of the Cape are not so striking.

Many of the animals mentioned are now becoming scarce, or to be seen only far in the interior. The elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus are rapidly disappearing through the persecution of the hunter. On the high open table-lands of the interior immense multitudes of quadrupeds congregate especially; and the proteaceæ, equally distinctive of this flora, abound most in the western districts of the colony, and are especially numerous on the sandy plains. One of the most beautiful of orchids, the famous _Disa grandiflora_, is a plant of Table Mountain. Among remarkable plants may be mentioned, the waxberry, _Myrsia cordifolia_, a shrub, the berries of which are thickly coated with wax; and the well-known monstrous-looking _Testudinaria elephantipes_. The much-cultivated and familiar great White Arum, _Calla Æthiopica_, is common in wet places.

It is worthy of note, that whilst the animals, both quadrupeds and birds, of South Africa have many relations with those of Western Africa within the tropics, the plants belong to completely a different series, and are connected with the flora of the rest of Africa only by eastern relations. In some features of the flora there is a curious analogy manifested with the Australian types.

The coasts of the Cape have a marine population as peculiar and striking in their way as the terrestrial, and constitute a well-marked sea-province, the eastern limits of which are to the south of Natal, where the great Indo-Pacific region meets that of the Cape. Among shell-fish, the limpet tribe has its chief congregation of species here.

WESTERN OR NEW WORLD.

ANTARCTIC AMERICA.

We enter the NEW WORLD by the cold regions of the extreme south--the home of penguins. Here we find forms of animal and vegetable life representative of those that inhabit the Arctic regions and their borders. The most southerly arborescent vegetation is seen in Hermit Island near Cape Horn, where stunted forests of antarctic and evergreen beeches grow. The same phenomenon is exhibited of multiplication of individuals and paucity of species to which attention will be called in the notice of the extreme north. The southernmost of all flowering plants is a grass, the _Aira antarctica_, a native of the South Shetland islands.

SOUTHERNMOST REGIONS.

By the Chilian auraucarias, the fuchsias, calceolarias, and petunias, some of the peculiar features of the vegetation of the southernmost regions of South America are indicated. Many of our most beautiful and familiar garden plants come from these provinces. In the high regions of the Andes of Chili, as well as further towards the equator, lives the chinchilla, famous for its fur, at an elevation of between 12,000 and 14,000 feet--guinea-pigs are found of peculiar kinds, and the llama, which ranges to a height of 1800 feet.

TROPICAL SOUTH AMERICA.

The rich regions of Brazil and Tropical America are typified by some of their most characteristic vegetable forms, and by not a few of the most striking members of their mammalian fauna, as well as birds of exquisite hues and strange shapes. Among the latter, the toucans and humming birds are singularly striking. This is the great central home of the New World monkeys, contrasting with and representative of those of the Old World, but constituting an entirely distinct group. Their nostrils placed far apart and flattened, the number of their teeth, and the prehensile tail,--a fifth hand,--with which so many of them are endowed, give them an aspect very different from their relatives over the Atlantic. In the vast forests of Brazil they revel among the palms, Barringtonias and monkey pots, whilst, on the ground below, the giant ant-eater, and many another creature equally strange, prowls around the shade. The jaguar, puma, and ocelot, which take the place of the great cats of the Old World, the agouti and capabara, the sloth and coati-mundi, all present themselves in this compartment. The American tapir is here, and in the more western portions of the ground, are placed crochet-deer, and the _Rhea americana_, the ostrich of the west. The llama marks the region of the Andes, and in the New World represents the camel of the Old.

CENTRAL AMERICA.

Birds of beautiful plumage, and vegetation of singular and fantastic forms, mark the separating region of Central America. The cactus tribe of plants, the yuccas, and the great aloe or rather agave give a peculiar and striking aspect to this region. Yet of the larger forms of animal life there is little to display. Before long we may show the strange sea-cow, or manatee, as coming within the bounds of this province, and a glance at the West Indian marine case will serve at once to indicate the richness and beauty of the fauna of seas and shores. The number and curious variety of its sponges, the elegance and rich painting of its shell-fish, the odd shapes of its fishes, and the presence of striking forms of reef-building corals, all, however, different from those of the Indian seas, cannot fail to impress its peculiarities on the thoughtful visitor.

Along the southern verge of this province is the country of that most exquisite of water-lilies, the great _Victoria_: on secluded lakes, among luxuriant forests, and in the reaches of the mighty rivers that flow tranquilly among them, this beautiful plant flourishes indigenous.

TEMPERATE NORTH AMERICA.

Between the Central and the Arctic Provinces are the wooded regions of NORTH AMERICA, where the vegetation of Canada passes into that of the United States, and is bounded on the western side by Oregonian fauna. A wide range has to be illustrated in a small space, and we are obliged to bring together in close proximity the countries of the pines and the palmettos. The Canadian porcupine, Wapiti deer, elk, beaver, raccoon, Virginian opossum, and Virginian deer stand here as representatives for the States and neighbouring countries. Shrew moles (Scalops aquaticus), starnoses (Condylura cristata), musk-rats, bony pikes and limuli would be effective additions, and highly characteristic. The fauna and flora of the United States, though in great part peculiar, are in many of their members curiously representative of the vegetable and animal life in the corresponding portion of the Old World; in not a few instances form replaces form. At the same time, the differences are not to be overlooked, and in the presence of the opossum, of some of the fishes and certain invertebrate animals, we seem to have indications of claims to a superior antiquity on the part of the so-called New, over the boasted Old World.

BARREN GROUNDS.

The _Barren grounds_ that skirt the polar regions of North America, and which include the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of the great lakes, constitute a region of low hills with rounded summits, and more or less precipitous sides, separated by narrow valleys. They are bare of trees, except near the margins of larger rivers; a few stunted willows, dwarf birches and larches, are occasionally met with, but the greater part of the surface is covered with lichens only. The brown bear, the glutton, the ermine, the Canadian otter, the wolf, the zibet, the arctic hare, the reindeer, and the musk-ox, are characteristic quadrupeds. Between this district and the northern shores of Lake Superior is a belt of wooded land, where the elk, squirrel, beaver, &c., occur. On the prairie lands that belong to the next section are the great bison or American buffalo, peculiar deer, and the grisly bear. Towards the west, and along the Rocky Mountains are found the American goat (only on the highest ridges), and the pretty prong-horned antelope. The distribution of most of these large animals is determined by the vegetation, and that in a great measure by the disposition of the water-sheds.

ARCTIC REGIONS.

To realise our conceptions, we ought, before quitting the Geographical Garden from the north, to find ourselves surrounded by masses of ice and snow. Let us picture in our minds long lines of hoary coasts, the dark rock occasionally breaking through its frosty covering, the deep green waves tossing masses of ice, and bearing up towering and fantastic icebergs, whose cleft and cavernous sides are beautiful with intense blue shadows. Great whales sport among the waters, their black masses, here and there, breaking the monotony of colours. Myriads of glancing jellyfishes, iridescent beroes, and pearly molluscs, give animation to the transparent waters. Flocks of sea-birds fly in every direction, watching the fishes that supply them with abundant food; seals rest on the icy platform, and nearer the land the great white bear, beautiful as strong, prowls along the verge of the shore. A scene such as this cannot be realised ever at Sydenham, but we can indicate some few of its characteristic elements. The imagination of intelligent visitors must supply the rest.

The Arctic Province is represented only in one geographical Court, that of the Western or New World. The one indication must serve for all the regions that border the icy seas. Indeed there is no forcing in this arrangement, for the entire Arctic fauna is characterised by prevailing monotony. Myriads of individuals of the prevailing species, mostly dull in hue, or at least deficient in brilliant colouring, whether they belong to the earth, the air, or the sea, compensate for the paucity of different kinds. White and grey, in the air; dull browns in the sea, are the prevailing tints. Some bright flowers during the summer season, break the modest rule by their gaiety. Throughout the icy seas, from Greenland round by Spitzbergen to Behring’s Straits, and along the labyrinthine coast of Asiatic America to Greenland again, the same marine animals are diffused. This is the region of the salmon genus, all the species of which radiate, as it were, around the Arctic province.

By the polar bears and a group of Arctic birds an indication of this northernmost of faunas is afforded. The various foxes of the Arctic shores, the dogs of the Esquimaux, the walrus with its human head, whalebone and finner whales, were their bulk admissible, would fill up the group with more completeness. The reindeer serves to indicate the boundary of the province, and stands as a representative of the verge of these realms of ice and snow.

AUSTRALIA AND INDIAN ISLANDS.

The vegetation and much of the animal population of the Indian islands, both on the land and in the sea, constitute a passage between the floras and faunas of Asia, and those so exceedingly peculiar, when regarded apart, of Australia. The group of islands connected with New Guinea--mountainous, forest-clothed, hot and moist in their climate--especially exhibit this passage. Spice-trees and numerous forms of palms mark differences; the presence of casuarinæ, gum-trees, and melaleucas, resemblances. A few species of Australian types are highly suggestive of the same relation.

The ourang, the Malay tapir, and bears, and the flying-squirrels, with a rich array of birds, illustrate the zoology of the Indian Archipelago; while that of Australia and Tasmania are indicated by the kangaroos, duck-billed platypus, Tasmanian wolf, and echidnas, with many of the singular and strangely peculiar birds of this most remarkable zoological province, where we seem to have the lowest conditions of the vertebrate type, assembled as if to indicate a rudimentary stage in the world’s history. The vegetation--typified here by Banksias and other proteaceous shrubs, epacridiæ, gum-trees, and many more forms as striking and peculiar--indicates a corner of the earth set apart.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

GEOLOGY AND INHABITANTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

DESCRIBED BY RICHARD OWEN, F.R.S.

THE ANIMALS CONSTRUCTED BY B. W. HAWKINS, F.G.S.

CRYSTAL PALACE LIBRARY, AND BRADBURY & EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET, LONDON.

1854.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE COMPANY, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

PAGE INTRODUCTION 5 THE SECONDARY ISLAND 7

CHALK FORMATION 9 THE MOSASAURUS 10 THE PTERODACTYLE 11

WEALDEN FORMATION 14 THE IGUANODON 14 THE HYLÆOSAURUS 17

OOLITE FORMATION 19 THE MEGALOSAURUS 19 PTERODACTYLES OF THE OOLITE 22 TELEOSAURUS 22

LIAS FORMATION 25 ENALIOSAURIA 25 THE ICHTHYOSAURUS 25 ICHTHYOSAURUS PLATYODON 29 ICHTHYOSAURUS TENUIROSTRIS 30 ICHTHYOSAURUS COMMUNIS 30 PLESIOSAURUS 31 PLESIOSAURUS MACROCEPHALUS 31 PLESIOSAURUS DOLICHODEIRUS 32 PLESIOSAURUS HAWKINSII 33

NEW RED SANDSTONE 35 BATRACHIA 35 LABYRINTHODON SALAMANDROIDES 36 LABYRINTHODON PACHYGNATHUS 38 DICYNODON 38

GEOLOGY AND INHABITANTS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

INTRODUCTION.

Before entering upon a description of the restorations of the Extinct Animals, placed on the Geological Islands in the great Lake, a brief account may be premised of the principles and procedures adopted in carrying out this attempt to present a view of part of the annual creation of former periods in the earth’s history.

Those extinct animals were first selected of which the entire, or nearly entire, skeleton had been exhumed in a fossil state. To accurate drawings of these skeletons an outline of the form of the entire animal was added, according to the proportions and relations of the skin and adjacent soft parts to the superficial parts of the skeleton, as yielded by those parts in the nearest allied living animals. From such an outline of the exterior, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins prepared at once a miniature model form in clay.

This model was rigorously tested in regard to all its proportions with those exhibited by the bones and joints of the skeleton of the fossil animal, and the required alterations and modifications were successively made, after repeated examinations and comparisons, until the result proved satisfactory.

The next step was to make a copy in clay of the proof model, of the natural size of the extinct animal: the largest known fossil bone, or part, of such animal being taken as the standard according to which the proportions of the rest of the body were calculated agreeably with those of the best preserved and most perfect skeleton. The model of the full size of the extinct animal having been thus prepared, and corrected by renewed comparisons with the original fossil remains, a mould of it was prepared, and a cast taken from this mould, in the material of which the restorations, now exposed to view, are composed.

There are some very rare and remarkable extinct animals of which only the fossil skull and a few detached bones of the skeleton have been discovered: in most of these the restoration has been limited to the head, as, for example, in the case of the Mosasaurus; and only in two instances--those, viz., of the Labyrinthodon and Dicynodon--has Mr. Hawkins taken upon himself the responsibility of adding the trunk to the known characters of the head, such addition having been made to illustrate the general affinities and nature of the fossil, and the kind of limbs required to produce the impressions of the footprints, where these have been detected and preserved in the petrified sands of the ancient sea-shores trodden by these strange forms of the Reptilian class.

With regard to the hair, the scales, the scutes, and other modifications of the skin, in some instances the analogy of the nearest allied living forms of animals has been the only guide; in a few instances, as in that of the Ichthyosaurus, portions of the petrified integument have been fortunately preserved, and have guided the artist most satisfactorily in the restoration of the skin and soft parts of the fins; in the case of other reptiles, the bony plates, spines, and scutes have been discovered in a fossil state, and have been, scrupulously copied in the attempt to restore the peculiar tegumentary features of the extinct reptiles, as _e.g._ in the Hylæosaurus.

In every stage of this difficult, and by some it may be thought, perhaps, too bold, attempt to reproduce and present to human gaze and contemplation the forms of animal life that have successively flourished during former geological phases of time, and have passed away long ages prior to the creation of man, the writer of the following brief notice of the nature and affinities of the animals so restored feels it a duty, as it is a high gratification to him, to testify to the intelligence, zeal, and peculiar artistic skill by which his ideas and suggestions have been realised and carried out by the talented director of the fossil department, Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins. Without the combination of science, art, and manual skill, happily combined in that gentleman, the present department of the Instructive Illustrations at the Crystal Palace could not have been realised.

THE SECONDARY ISLAND.

The most cursory observation of the surface of the earth shows that it is composed of distinct substances, such as clay, chalk, lias, limestone, coal, slate, sandstone, &c.; and a study of such substances, their relative position and contents, has led to the conviction that these external parts of the earth have acquired their present condition gradually, under a variety of circumstances, and at successive periods, during which many races of animated beings, distinct both from those of other periods and from those now living, have successively peopled the land and the waters; the remains of these creatures being found buried in many of the layers or masses of mineral substances, forming the crust of the earth.

The object of the Islands in the Geological Lake is to demonstrate the order of succession, or superposition, of these layers or strata, and to exhibit, restored in form and bulk, as when they lived, the most remarkable and characteristic of the extinct animals and plants of each stratum.

The series of mineral substances and strata represented in the smaller island have been called by geologists “secondary formations,” because they lie between an older series termed “primary,” and a newer series termed “tertiary:” the term “formation” meaning any assemblage of rocks or layers which have some character in common, whether of origin, age, or composition.[43]

[43] Lyell, “Manual of Elementary Geology.”

Following the secondary formations as they descend in the earth, or succeed each other from above downwards, and as they are shown, obliquely tilted up out of their original level position from left to right, in the Secondary Island, they consist: 1st, of the Chalk or Cretaceous group; 2nd, the Wealden; 3rd, the Oolite; 4th, the Lias; and 5th, the New Red Sandstone.

THE CHALK.

The chalk formations or “cretaceous group of beds” include strata of various mineral substances; but the white chalk which forms the cliffs of Dover and the adjoining coasts, and the downs and chalk quarries of the South of England, is the chief and most characteristic formation. Chalk, immense as are the masses in which it has been deposited, owes its origin to living actions; every particle of it once circulated in the blood or vital juices of certain species of animals, or of a few plants, that lived in the seas of the secondary period of geological time. White chalk consists of carbonate of lime, and is the result of the decomposition chiefly of coral-animals (_Madrepores_, _Millepores_, _Flustra_, _Cellepora_, &c.), of sea-urchins (_Echini_), and of shell-fishes (_Testacea_), and of the mechanical reduction, pounding, and grinding of their shells. Such chalk-forming beings still exist, and continue their operations in various parts of the ocean, especially in the construction of coral reefs and islands.

Every river that traverses a limestone district carries into the sea a certain proportion of caustic lime in solution: the ill effects of the accumulation of this mineral are neutralised by the power allotted to the above-cited sea-animals to absorb the lime, combine it with carbonic-acid, and precipitate or deposit it in the condition of insoluble chalk, or carbonate of lime.

The entire cretaceous series includes from above downwards:

Maestricht beds of yellowish chalk.

Upper white chalk with flints.

Lower white chalk without flints.

Upper green-sand.

Gault.

Lower green-sand and Kentish rag.

The best known and most characteristic large extinct animal of the chalk formations is chiefly found in the uppermost and most recent division, and is called

No. 1.--THE MOSASAURUS.

(_Mosasaurus Hoffmanni_, Hoffmann’s Mosasaur.)

Of this animal almost the entire skull has been discovered, but not sufficient of the rest of the skeleton to guide to a complete restoration of the animal. The head only, therefore, is shown, of the natural size, at the left extremity of the Secondary Island.

The first or generic name of this animal is derived from the locality, Maestricht, on the river Meuse (Lat. _Mosa_), in Germany, where its remains have been chiefly discovered, and from the Greek, word _sauros_, a lizard, to which tribe of animals it belongs. Its second name refers to its discoverer, Dr. Hoffmann, of Maestricht, surgeon to the forces quartered in that town in 1780. This gentleman had occupied his leisure by the collection of the fossils from the quarries which were then worked to a great extent at Maestricht for a kind of yellowish stone of a chalky nature, and belonging to the most recent of the secondary class of formations in geology. In one of the great subterraneous quarries or galleries, about five hundred paces from the entrance, and ninety feet below the surface, the quarrymen exposed part of the skull of the Mosasaurus, in a block of stone which they were engaged in detaching. On this discovery they suspended their work, and went to inform Dr. Hoffmann, who, on arriving at the spot, directed the operations of the men, so that they worked out the block without injury to the fossil; and the doctor then, with his own hands, cleared away the matrix and exposed the jaws and teeth, casts of which are shown in the cretaceous rock of the Island.

This fine specimen, which Hoffmann had added with so much pains and care to his collection, soon, however, became a source of chagrin to him. One of the canons of the cathedral at Maestricht, who owned the surface of the soil beneath which was the quarry whence the fossil had been obtained, when the fame of the specimen reached him, pleaded certain feudal rights to it. Hoffmann resisted, and the canon went to law. The Chapter supported the canon, and the decree ultimately went against the poor surgeon, who lost both his specimen and his money--being made to pay the costs of the action. The canon did not, however, long enjoy possession of the unique specimen. When the French army bombarded Maestricht in 1795, directions were given to spare the suburb in which the famous fossil was known to be preserved; and after the capitulation of the town it was seized and borne off in triumph. The specimen has since remained in the museum of the Garden of Plants at Paris.

This skull of the Mosasaurus measures four and a half feet long and two and a half feet wide. The large pointed teeth on the jaws are very conspicuous; but, in addition to these, the gigantic reptile had teeth on a bone of the roof of the mouth (the pterygoid), like some of the modern lizards. The entire length of the animal has been estimated at about thirty feet. It is conjectured to have been able to swim well, and to have frequented the sea in quest of prey: its dentition shows its predatory and carnivorous character, and its remains have hitherto been met with exclusively in the chalk formations. Besides the specimens from St. Peter’s Mount, Maestricht, of which the above-described skull is the most remarkable, fossil bones and teeth of the Mosasaurus have been found in the chalk of Kent, and in the green-sand--a member of the cretaceous series--in New Jersey, United States of America. No animal like the Mosasaurus is now known to exist.

Nos. 2 & 3.--THE PTERODACTYLE.

Nos. 2 and 3 are restorations of a flying reptile or dragon, called Pterodactyle, from the Greek words _pteron_, a wing, and _dactylos_, a finger; because the wings are mainly supported by the outer finger, enormously lengthened and of proportionate strength, which, nevertheless, answers to the little finger of the human hand. The wings consisted of folds of skin, like the leather wings of the bat; and the Pterodactyles were covered with scales, not with feathers: the head, though somewhat resembling in shape that of a bird, and supported on a long and slender neck, was provided with long jaws, armed with teeth; and altogether the structure of these extinct members of the reptilian class is such as to rank them amongst the most extraordinary of all the creatures yet discovered in the ruins of the ancient earth.

Remains of the Pterodactyle were first discovered, in 1784, by Prof. Collini, in the lithographic slate of Aichstadt, in Germany, which slate is a member of the oolitic formations: the species so discovered was at first mistaken for a bird, and afterwards supposed to be a large kind of bat, but had its true reptilian nature demonstrated by Baron Cuvier, by whom it was called the _Pterodactylus longirostris_, or Long-beaked Pterodactyle: it was about the size of a curlew.

A somewhat larger species--the _Pterodactylus macronyx_, or Long-clawed Pterodactyle--was subsequently discovered by the Rev. Dr. Buckland, in the lias formation of Lyme Regis: its wings, when expanded, must have been about four feet from tip to tip. The smallest known species--the _Pterodactylus brevirostris_, or Short-beaked Pterodactyle--was discovered in the lithographic slate at Solenhofen, Germany, and has been described by Professor Soemmering.

Remains of the largest known kinds of Pterodactyle have been discovered more recently in chalk-pits, at Burham, in Kent. The skull of one of these species--the _Pterodactylus Cuvieri_--was about twenty inches in length, and the animal was upborne on an expanse of wing of probably not less than eighteen feet from tip to tip. The restored specimen of this species is numbered 3.

A second very large kind of Pterodactyle--the _Pterodactylus compressirostris_, or Thin-beaked Pterodactyle--had a head from fourteen to sixteen inches in length, and an expanse of wing, from tip to tip, of fifteen feet. The remains of this species have also been found in the chalk of Kent. From the same formation and locality a third large kind of Pterodactyle, although inferior in size to the two foregoing, has been discovered, called the _Pterodactylus conirostris_, and also--until the foregoing larger kinds were discovered--_Pterodactylus giganteus_. The long, sharp, conical teeth in the jaws of the Pterodactyles indicate them to have preyed upon other living animals; their eyes were large, as if to enable them to fly by night. From their wings projected fingers, terminated by long curved claws, and forming a powerful paw, wherewith the animal was enabled to creep and climb, or suspend itself from trees. It is probable, also, that the Pterodactyles had the power of swimming; some kinds, _e.g._, the _Pterodactylus Gemmingi_, had a long and stiff tail. “Thus,” writes Dr. Buckland, “like Milton’s Fiend, all qualified for all services and all elements, the creature was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that swarmed in the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbulent planet.

‘The Fiend, O’er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.’

_Paradise Lost_, Book II.”

THE WEALDEN.

The Wealden is a mass of petrified clay, sand, and sandstone, deposited from the fresh or brackish water of probably some great estuary, and extending over parts of the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This fresh-water formation derives its name from the “Weald” or “Wold” of Kent, where it was first geologically studied, and where it is exposed by the removal of the chalk, which covers or overlies it, in other parts of the South of England.

The Wealden is divided into three groups of strata, which succeed each other in the following descending order:--

1st. Weald Clay, sometimes including thin beds of sand and shelly limestone, forming beds of from 140 to 280 feet in depth or vertical thickness.

2nd. Hastings Sand, in which occur some clays and calcareous grits, forming beds of from 400 to 500 feet in depth.

3rd. Purbeck Beds, so called from being exposed chiefly in the Isle of Purbeck, off the coast of Dorsetshire, where it forms the quarries of the limestone for which Purbeck is famous: the beds of limestones and marls are from 150 to 200 feet in depth.

Nos. 4 & 5.--THE IGUANODON.

(_Iguanodon Mantelli_, Conybeare.)

One afternoon, in the spring of 1822, an accomplished lady, the wife of a medical practitioner, at Lewes, in Sussex, walking along the picturesque paths of Tilgate Forest, discovered some objects in the coarse conglomerate rock of the quarries of that locality, which, from their peculiar form and substance, she thought would be interesting to her husband, whose attention had been directed, during his professional drives, to the geology and fossils of his neighbourhood.

The lady was Mrs. Mantell: her husband, the subsequently distinguished geologist, Dr. Mantell,[44] perceived that the fossils discovered by his wife were teeth, and teeth of a large and unknown animal.

[44] “The first specimens of the teeth were found by Mrs. Mantell in the coarse conglomerate of the Forest, in the spring of 1822.”--Mantell, “Geology of the South-East of England,” 8vo, 1833, p. 268.

“As these teeth,” writes the doctor, “were distinct from any that had previously come under my notice, I felt anxious to submit them to the examination of persons whose knowledge and means of observation were more extensive than my own. I therefore transmitted specimens to some of the most eminent naturalists in this country and on the continent. But although my communications were acknowledged with that candour and liberality which constantly characterise the intercourse of scientific men, yet no light was thrown upon the subject, except by the illustrious Baron Cuvier, whose opinions will best appear by the following extract from the correspondence with which he honoured me:--

“‘These teeth are certainly unknown to me; they are not from a carnivorous animal, and yet I believe that they belong, from their slight degree of complexity, the notching of their margins, and the thin coat of enamel that covers them, to the order of reptiles.

“‘May we not here have a new animal!--a herbivorous reptile? And, just as at the present time with regard to mammals (land-quadrupeds with warm blood), it is amongst the herbivorous that we find the largest species, so also with the reptiles at the remote period when they were the sole terrestrial animals, might not the largest amongst them have been nourished by vegetables?

“‘Some of the great bones which you possess may belong to this animal, which, up to the present time, is unique in its kind. Time will confirm or confute this idea, since it is impossible but that one day a part of the skeleton, united to portions of jaws with the teeth, will be discovered.’”

“These remarks,” Dr. Mantell proceeds to say, “induced me to pursue my investigations with increased assiduity, but hitherto they have not been attended with the desired success, no connected portion of the skeleton having been discovered. Among the specimens lately connected, some, however, were so perfect, that I resolved to avail myself of the obliging offer of Mr. Clift (to whose kindness and liberality I hold myself particularly indebted), to assist me in comparing the fossil teeth with those of the recent Lacertæ in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The result of this examination proved highly satisfactory, for in an Iguana which Mr. Stutchbury had prepared to present to the College, we discovered teeth possessing the form and structure of the fossil specimens.” (Phil. Trans., 1825, p. 180.) And he afterwards adds:--“The name Iguanodon, derived from the form of the teeth, (and which I have adopted at the suggestion of the Rev. W. Conybeare,) will not, it is presumed, be deemed objectionable.” (Ib. p. 184.)

The further discovery which Baron Cuvier’s prophetic glance saw buried in the womb of time, and the birth of which verified his conjecture that some of the great bones collected by Dr. Mantell belonged to the same animal as the teeth, was made by Mr. W. H. Bensted, of Maidstone, the proprietor of a stone-quarry of the Shanklin-sand formation, in the close vicinity of that town. This gentleman had his attention one day, in May, 1834, called by his workmen to what they supposed to be petrified wood in some pieces of stone which they had been blasting. He perceived that what they supposed to be wood was fossil bone, and with a zeal and care which have always characterised his endeavours to secure for science any evidence of fossil remains in his quarry, he immediately resorted to the spot. He found that the bore or blast by which these remains were brought to light, had been inserted into the centre of the specimen, so that the mass of stone containing it had been shattered into many pieces, some of which were blown into the adjoining fields. All these pieces he had carefully collected, and proceeding with equal ardour and success to the removal of the matrix from the fossils, he succeeded after a month’s labour in exposing them to view, and in fitting the fragments to their proper places.

This specimen is now in the British Museum.

Many other specimens of detached bones, including vertebræ or parts of the back-bone, especially that part resting on the hind limbs, and called the “pelvis,” bones of the limbs, down to those that supported the claws, together with jaws and teeth, which have since been successively discovered, have enabled anatomists to reconstruct the extinct Iguanodon, and have proved it to have been a herbivorous reptile, of colossal dimensions, analogous to the diminutive Iguana in the form of its teeth, but belonging to a distinct and higher order of reptiles, more akin to the crocodiles. The same rich materials, selecting the largest of the bones as a standard, have served for the present restorations (Nos. 4 and 5) of the animal, as when alive: all the parts being kept in just proportion to the standard bones, and the whole being thus brought to the following dimensions:--

Total length, from the nose or muzzle to the end of the tail 34 feet 9 inches. Greatest girth of the trunk 20 „ 5 „ Length of the head 3 „ 6 „ Length of the tail 15 „ 6 „

The character of the scales is conjectural, and the horn more than doubtful, though attributed to the Iguanodon by Dr. Mantell and most geologists.

This animal probably lived near estuaries and rivers, and may have derived its food from the _Clathrariæ_, _Zamiæ_, _Cycades_, and other extinct trees, of which the fossil remains abound in the same formations as those yielding the bones and teeth of the Iguanodon.

These formations are the Wealden and the Neocomian or green-sand: the localities in which the remains of the Iguanodon have been principally found, are the Weald of Kent and Sussex: Horsham, in Sussex; Maidstone, in Kent; and the Isle of Wight.

Restorations of the _Cycas_ and _Zamia_ are placed, with the Iguanodon, on the Wealden division of the Secondary Island.

No. 6.--THE HYLÆOSAURUS. (_Hylæosaurus Owenii._)

The animal, so called by its discoverer, Dr. Mantell, belongs to the same highly organised order of the class of reptiles as the Iguanodon, that, viz., which was characterised by a longer and stronger sacrum and pelvis, and by larger limbs than the reptiles of the present day possess; they were accordingly better fitted for progression on dry land, and probably carried their body higher and more freely above the surface of the ground.

Visiting, in the summer of 1832, a quarry in Tilgate Forest, Dr. Mantell had his attention attracted to some fragments of a large mass of stone, which had recently been broken up, and which exhibited traces of numerous pieces of bone. The portions of the rock, which admitted of being restored together, were cemented, and then the rock was chiselled from the fossil bones, which consisted of part of the back-bone or vertebral column, some ribs, the shoulder bones called scapula and coracoid, and numerous long angular bones or spines which seemed to have supported a lofty serrated or jagged crest, extended along the middle of the back, as in some of the small existing lizards, _e.g._, the Iguana: cut No. 6. Many small dermal bones were also found, which indicate the Hylæosaurus to have been covered by hard tuberculate scales, like those of some of the Australian lizards, called _Cyclodus_.

This character of the skin, and the serrated crest, are accurately given in the restoration, the major part of which, however, is necessarily at present conjectural, and carried out according to the general analogies of the saurian form. The size is indicated with more certainty according to the proportions of the known vertebræ and other bones.

THE OOLITE.

The division of the secondary formations, called “Oolite,” takes its name from the most characteristic of its constituents, which is a variety of limestone composed of numerous small grains, resembling the “roe” or eggs of a fish, whence the term, (from the Greek _oon_, an egg, _lithos_, a stone). The oolite, however, includes a great series of beds of marine origin, which, with an average breadth of thirty miles, extend across England, from Yorkshire in the north-east to Dorsetshire in the south-west.

The oolite series lies below the Wealden, and where this is wanting, below the chalk, and consists of the following subdivisions, succeeding each other in the descending order:--

OOLITE.

Upper. {Portland stone and sand. {Kimmeridge clay.

Middle. {Coral rag. {Oxford clay.

{Cornbrash and forest marble. Lower. {Great oolite and Stonesfield slate. {Fuller’s earth. {Inferior oolite.

Upon the portion of the island representing the oolite series, the most conspicuous of the restored animals of that period is--

No. 7.--THE MEGALOSAURUS.

The Megalosaurus, as its name implies (compounded by its discoverer, Dr. Buckland, from the Greek _megas_, great, and _sauros_, lizard), was a lizard-like reptile of great size, “of which,” writes Dr. Buckland, “although no skeleton has yet been found entire, so many perfect bones and teeth have been discovered in the same quarries, that we are nearly as well acquainted with the form and dimensions of the limbs as if they had been found together in a single block of stone.”

The restoration of the animal has been accordingly effected, agreeably with the proportions of the known parts of the skeleton, and in harmony with the general characters of the order of reptiles to which the Megalosaurus belonged. This order--the Dinosauria (Gr. _deinos_, terribly great _sauros_, a lizard)--is that to which the two foregoing huge reptiles of the Wealden series belong, viz., the Iguanodon and Hylæosaurus, and is characterised by the modifications already mentioned, that fitted them for more efficient progression upon dry land. The Iguanodon represented the herbivorous section of the order, the Hylæosaurus appears, from its teeth, to have been a mixed feeder, but the Megalosaurus was decidedly carnivorous, and, probably, waged a deadly war against its less destructively endowed congeners and contemporaries.

Baron Cuvier estimated the Megalosaurus to have been about fifty feet in length; my own calculations, founded on more complete evidence than had been at the Baron’s command, reduce its size to about thirty-five feet:[45] but with the superior proportional height and capacity of trunk, as contrasted with the largest existing crocodiles, even that length gives a most formidable character to this extinct predatory reptile.

[45] “Report of British Fossil Reptiles,” 1841, p. 110.

As the thigh-bone (_femur_) and leg-bone (_tibia_) measure each nearly three feet, the entire hind-leg, allowing for the cartilages of the joints, must have attained a length of two yards: a bone of the foot (metatarsal) thirteen inches long, indicates that part, with the toes and claws entire, to have been at least three feet in length. The form of the teeth shows the Megalosaurus to have been strictly carnivorous, and viewed as instruments for providing food for so enormous a reptile, the teeth were fearfully fitted to the destructive office for which they were designed. They have compressed conical sharp-pointed crowns, with cutting and finely serrated anterior and posterior edges; they appear straight, as seen when they had just protruded from the socket, but become bent slightly backwards in the progress of growth, and the fore part of the crown, below the summit, becomes thick and convex.

A minute and interesting description of these teeth will be found in Dr. Buckland’s admirable “Bridgewater Treatise” (vol. i. p. 238), from which he concludes that the teeth of the Megalosaurus present “a combination of contrivances analogous to those which human ingenuity has adopted in the construction of the knife, the sabre, and the saw.” The fossils which brought to light the former existence of this most formidable reptile, were discovered in 1823, in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford, and were described by Dr. Buckland, in the volume of the “Geological Transactions” for the year 1824.

Remains of the Megalosaurus have since been discovered in the “Bath oolite,” which is immediately below the Stonesfield slate, and in the “Cornbrash,” which lies above it. Vertebræ, teeth, and some bones of the extremities have been discovered in the Wealden of Tilgate Forest, Kent, and in the ferruginous sand, of the same age, near Cuckfield, in Sussex. Remains of the Megalosaurus also occur in the Purbeck limestone at Swanage Bay, and in the oolite in the neighbourhood of Malton, in Yorkshire.

Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins’s restoration, according to the proportions calculated from the largest portions of fossil bones of the Megalosaurus hitherto obtained, yields a total length of the animal, from the muzzle to the end of the tail, of thirty-seven feet; the length of the head being five feet, the length of the tail fifteen feet; and the greatest girth of the body twenty-two feet six inches.

Nos. 8 & 9.--PTERODACTYLES OF THE OOLITE.

To the right of the Hylæosaurus, on the rock representing the greater oolite formation, are restorations of species of Pterodactyle (_Pterodactylus Bucklandi_, No. 9), smaller than and distinct from those of the chalk formations. The remains of Buckland’s Pterodactyle are found pretty abundantly in the oolitic slate of Stonesfield, near Oxford.

Nos. 10 & 11.--TELEOSAURUS.

On the shore beneath the overhanging cliff of oolitic rock are two restorations, Nos. 10 and 11, of a large extinct kind of crocodile, to which the long and slender-jawed crocodile of the Ganges, called “Gaviàl” or “Gharriàl” by the Hindoos, offers the nearest resemblance at the present day. Remains of the ancient extinct British gavials have been found in most of the localities where the oolitic formations occur, and very abundantly in the lias cliffs near Whitby, in Yorkshire. The name Teleosaurus (_telos_, the end, _sauros_, a lizard), was compounded from the Greek by Professor Geoffroy St. Hilaire, for a species of these fossil gavials, found by him in the oolite stone at Caen, in Normandy, and has reference to his belief that they formed one--the earliest--extreme of the crocodilian series, as this series has been successively developed, in the course of time on our planet.

The jaws are armed with numerous long, slender, sharp-pointed, slightly curved teeth, indicating that they preyed on fishes, and the young or weaker individuals of co-existing reptiles. The nostril is situated more at the end of the upper jaw than in the modern gavial: the fore-limbs are shorter, and the hind ones longer and stronger than in the gavial, which indicates that the Teleosaur was a better swimmer; the vertebræ or bones of the back are united by slightly concave surfaces, not interlocked by cup and ball joints as in the modern crocodiles, whence it would seem that the Teleosaur lived more habitually in the water, and less seldom moved on dry land; and, as its fossil remains have been hitherto found only in the sedimentary deposits from the sea, it may be inferred that it was more strictly marine than the crocodile of the Ganges.

The first specimen of a Teleosaur that was brought to light was from the “alum-schale” which forms one layer of the lofty lias cliffs of the Yorkshire coast, near Whitby. A brief description, and figures, of this incomplete fossil skeleton were published by Messrs. Wooller and Chapman, in separate communications, in the 50th volume of the “Philosophical Transactions,” in 1758. Captain Chapman observes, “it seems to have been an alligator;” and Mr. Wooller thought “it resembled in every respect the Gangetic gavial.” Thus, nearly a century ago, the true nature of the fossil was almost rightly understood, and various were the theories then broached to account for the occurrence of a supposed Gangetic reptile in a petrified state in the cliffs of Yorkshire. It has required the subsequent progress of comparative anatomy to determine, as by the characters above defined, the essential distinction of the Teleosaur from all known existing forms of crocodilian reptiles.

Very abundant remains, and several species, of the extinct genus have been subsequently discovered: but always in the oolitic and liassic formations of the secondary series of rocks.

The oolitic group of rocks are very rich in remains of both plants and animals: many reptiles of genera and species distinct from those here restored have been recognised and determined by portions of the skeleton. Extremely numerous are the remains of fishes, chiefly of an almost extinct order (_Ganoidei_), characterised by hard, shining, enamelled scales. But the most remarkable fossils are those which indisputably prove the existence, during the period of the “Great” or “Lower Oolite,” of insectivorous and marsupial mammalia--_i.e._, of warm-blood quadrupeds, which, like the shrew or hedgehog, fed on insects, and, like the opossum, had a pouch for the transport of the young. The lower jaw of one of these earliest known examples of the mammalian class, found in the Stonesfield slate, near Oxford, may be seen at the British Museum, to which it was presented by J. W. Broderip, Esq., F.R.S., by whom it was described in the “Zoological Journal,” vol. iii., p. 408.

It is interesting to observe that the marsupial genera, to which the above fossil quadruped, called _Phascolotherium_, was most nearly allied, are now confined to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land; since it is in the Australian seas that is found the _Cestracion_, a cartilaginous fish which has teeth that are most like those fossil teeth called _Acrodus_ and _Psammodus_, so common in the oolite. In the same Australian seas, also, near the shore, the beautiful shell-fish called _Trigonia_ is found living, of which genus many fossil species occur in the Stonesfield slate. Moreover, the Araucarian pines are now abundant, together with ferns, in Australia, as they were in Europe in the oolitic period.

THE LIAS.

“Lias” is an English provincial name adopted in geology, and applied to a formation of limestone, marl, and petrified clay, which forms the base of the oolite, or immediately underlies that division of secondary rocks. The lias has been traced throughout a great part of Europe, forming beds of a thickness varying from 500 to 1000 feet of the above-mentioned substances, which have been gradually deposited from a sea of corresponding extent and direction. The lias abounds with marine shells of extinct species, and with remains of fishes that were clad with large and hard shining scales. Of the higher or air-breathing animals of that period, the most characteristic were the

ENALIOSAURIA.

The creatures called Enaliosauria or Sea-lizards (from the Greek _enalios_, of the sea, and _sauros_, lizard), were vertebrate animals, or had back bones, breathed the air like land quadrupeds, but were cold-blooded, or of a low temperature, like crocodiles and other reptiles. The proof that the Enaliosaurs respired atmospheric air immediately, and did not breathe water by means of gills like fishes, is afforded by the absence of the bony framework of the gill apparatus, and by the presence, position, and structure of the air passages leading from the nostrils, and also by the bony mechanism of the capacious chest or thoracic-abdominal cavity: all of which characters have been demonstrated by their fossil skeletons. With these characters the Sea-lizards combined the presence of two pairs of limbs shaped like fins, and adapted for swimming.

The Enaliosauria offer two principal modifications of their anatomical, and especially their bony, structure, of which the two kinds grouped together under the respective names of Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus are the examples.

THE ICHTHYOSAURUS.

The genus Ichthyosaurus includes many species: of which three of the best known and most remarkable have been selected for restoration to illustrate this most singular of the extinct forms of animal life.

The name (from the Greek _ichthys_, a fish, and _sauros_, a lizard) indicates the closer affinity of the Ichthyosaur, as compared with the Plesiosaur, to the class of fishes. The Ichthyosaurs are remarkable for the shortness of the neck and the equality of the width of the back of the head with the front of the chest, impressing the observer of the fossil skeleton with a conviction that the ancient animal must have resembled the whale tribe and the fishes in the absence of any intervening constriction or “neck.”

This close approximation in the Ichthyosaurs to the form of the most strictly aquatic back-boned (vertebrate) animals of the existing creation is accompanied by an important modification of the surfaces forming the joints of the back-bone, each of which surfaces is hollow, leading to the inference that they were originally connected together by an elastic bag, or “capsule,” filled with fluid--a structure which prevails in the class of fishes, but not in any of the whale or porpoise tribe, nor in any, save a few of the very lowest and most fish-like, of the existing reptiles.

With the above modifications of the head, trunk, and limbs, in relation to swimming, there co-exist corresponding modifications of the tail. The bones of this part are much more numerous than in the Plesiosaurs, and the entire tail is consequently longer; but it does not show any of those modifications that characterise the bony support of the tail in fishes. The numerous “caudal vertebræ” of the Ichthyosaurus gradually decrease in size to the end of the tail, where they assume a compressed form, or are flattened from side to side, and thus the tail instead of being short and broad, as in fishes, is lengthened out as in crocodiles.

The very frequent occurrence of a fracture of the tail, about one fourth of the way from its extremity, in well-preserved and entire fossil skeletons, is owing to that proportion of the end of the tail having supported a tail-fin. The only evidence which the fossil skeleton of a whale would yield of the powerful horizontal tail-fin characteristic of the living animal, is the depressed or horizontally flattened form of the bones supporting such fin. It is inferred, therefore, from the corresponding bones of the Ichthyosaurus being flattened from side to side, that it possessed a tegumentary tail-fin expanded in the vertical direction. The shape of a fin composed of such perishable material is of course conjectural, but from analogies, not necessary here to further enlarge upon, it was probably like, or nearly like, that which the able artist engaged in the restoration of the entire form of the animal has given to it. Thus, in the construction of the principal swimming-organ of the Ichthyosaurus we may trace, as in other parts of its structure, a combination of mammalian (beast-like), saurian (lizard-like), and piscine (fish-like) peculiarities. In its great length and gradual diminution we perceive its saurian character; the tegumentary nature of the fin, unsustained by bony fin-rays, bespeaks its affinity to the same part in the mammalian whales and porpoises; whilst its vertical position makes it closely resemble the tail-fin of the fish.

The horizontality of the tail-fin of the whale tribe is essentially connected with their necessities as warm-blooded animals breathing atmospheric air; without this means of displacing a mass of water in the vertical direction, the head of the whale could not be brought with the required rapidity to the surface to respire; but the Ichthyosaurs, not being warm-blooded, or quick breathers, would not need to bring their head to the surface so frequently, or so rapidly, as the whale; and, moreover, a compensation for the want of horizontality of their tail-fin was provided by the addition of a pair of hind-paddles, which are not present in the whale tribe. The vertical fin was a more efficient organ in the rapid cleaving of the liquid element, when the Ichthyosaurs were in pursuit of their prey, or escaping from an enemy.

That the Ichthyosaurs occasionally sought the shores, crawled on the strand, and basked in the sunshine, may be inferred from the bony structure connected with their fore-fins, which does not exist in any porpoise, dolphin, grampus, or whale; and for want of which, chiefly, those warm-blooded, air-breathing, marine animals are so helpless when left high and dry on the sands: the structure in question in the Ichthyosaur is a strong osseous arch, inverted and spanning across beneath the chest from one shoulder-joint to the other; and what is most remarkable in the structure of this “scapular” arch, as it is called, is, that it closely resembles, in the number, shape, and disposition of its bones, the same part in the singular aquatic mammalian quadruped of Australia, called _Ornithorhynchus_, _Platypus_, and Duck-mole. The Ichthyosaurs, when so visiting the shore, either for sleep, or procreation, would lie, or crawl prostrate, or with the belly resting or dragging on the ground.

The most extraordinary feature of the head was the enormous magnitude of the eye; and from the quantity of light admitted by the expanded pupil it must have possessed great powers of vision, especially in the dusk. It is not uncommon to find in front of the orbit (cavity for the eye), in fossil skulls, a circular series of petrified thin bony plates, ranged round a central aperture, where the pupil of the eye was placed. The eyes of many fishes are defended by a bony covering consisting of two pieces; but a compound circle of overlapping plates is now found only in the eyes of turtles, tortoises, lizards, and birds. This curious apparatus of bony plates would aid in protecting the eyeball from the waves of the sea when the Ichthyosaurus rose to the surface, and from the pressure of the dense element when it dived to great depths; and they show, writes Dr. Buckland,[46] “that the enormous eye, of which they formed the front, was an optical instrument of varied and prodigious power, enabling the Ichthyosaurus to descry its prey at great or little distances, in the obscurity of night, and in the depths of the sea.”

[46] Op. cit., p. 174.

Of no extinct reptile are the materials for a complete and exact restoration more abundant and satisfactory than of the Ichthyosaurus they plainly show that its general external figure must have been that of a huge predatory abdominal fish, with a longer tail, and a smaller tail-fin: scale-less, moreover, and covered by a smooth, or finely wrinkled skin analogous to that of the whale tribe.

The mouth was wide, and the jaws long, and armed with numerous pointed teeth, indicative of a predatory and carnivorous nature in all the species; but these differed from one another in regard to the relative strength of the jaws, and the relative size and length of the teeth.

Masses of masticated bones and scales of extinct fishes, that lived in the same seas and at the same period as the Ichthyosaurus, have been found under the ribs of fossil specimens, in the situation where the stomach of the animal was placed; smaller, harder, and more digested masses, containing also fish-bones and scales have been found, bearing the impression of the structure of the internal surface of the intestine of the great predatory sea-lizard. These digested masses are called “coprolites.”

In tracing the evidences of creative power from the earlier to the later formations of the earth’s crust, remains of the Ichthyosaurus are first found in the lower lias, and occur, more or less abundantly, through all the superincumbent secondary strata up to, and inclusive of, the chalk formations. They are most numerous in the lias and oolite, and the largest and most characteristic species have been found in these formations.

No. 12.--ICHTHYOSAURUS PLATYODON.

This most gigantic species, so called on account of the crown of the tooth being more flattened than in other species, and having sharp edges, as well as a sharp point, was first discovered in the has of Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire. Fossil remains now in the British Museum, and in the museum of the Geological Society, fully bear out the dimensions exhibited by the restoration of the animal as seen basking on the shore between the two specimens of Long-necked Plesiosaurs. The head of this species is relatively larger in proportion to the trunk, than in the _Ichthyosaurus communis_ or _Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris_: the lower jaw is remarkably massive and powerful, and projects backwards beyond the joint, as far as it does in the crocodile. In the skull of an individual of this species, preserved in the apartments of the Geological Society of London, the cavity for the eye, or orbit, measures, in its long diameter, fourteen inches. The fore and hind paddles are large and of equal size.

The lias of the valley of Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire, is the chief grave-yard of the _Ichthyosaurus platyodon_; but its remains are pretty widely distributed. They have been found in the lias of Glastonbury, of Bristol, of Scarborough and Whitby, and of Bitton, in Gloucestershire; some vertebræ, apparently of this species, have likewise been found in the lias at Ohmden, in Germany.

No. 13.--ICHTHYOSAURUS TENUIROSTRIS.

Behind the _Ichthyosaurus platyodon_, is placed the restoration of the _Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris_, or Slender-snouted Fish-lizard. The most striking peculiarity of this species is the great length and slenderness of the jaw-bones, which, in combination with the large eye-sockets and flattened cranium, give to the entire skull a form which resembles that of a gigantic snipe or woodcock, with the bill armed with teeth. These weapons, in the present species, are relatively more numerous, smaller, and more sharply pointed than in the foregoing, and indicate that the _Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris_ preyed on a smaller kind of fish. The fore-paddles are larger than the hind ones. In the museum of the Philosophical Institution, at Bristol, there is an almost entire skeleton of the present species which measures thirteen feet in length. It was discovered in the lias of Lyme Regis. Portions of jaws and other parts of the skeletons of larger individuals have been found fossil in the lias near Bristol, at Barrow-on-Soar, in Leicestershire, and at Stratford-on-Avon. The _Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris_ has also left its remains in the lias formation at Boll and Amburg, in Wirtemberg, Germany.

No. 14.--ICHTHYOSAURUS COMMUNIS.

Of this species, which was the most “common,” when first discovered in 1824, but which has since been surpassed by other species in regard to the known number of individuals, the head is restored, as protruded from the water, to the right of the foregoing species.

The _Ichthyosaurus communis_ is characterised by its relatively large teeth, with expanded, deeply-grooved bases, and round conical furrowed crowns; the upper jaw contains, on each side, from forty to fifty of such teeth. The fore-paddles are three times larger than the hind ones. With respect to the size which it attained, the _Ichthyosaurus communis_ seems only to be second to the _Ichthyosaurus platyodon_. In the museum of the Earl of Enniskillen, there is a fossil skull of the _Ichthyosaurus communis_ which, measures, in length, two feet nine inches, indicating an animal of at least twenty feet in length.

PLESIOSAURUS.

The discovery of this genus forms one of the most important additions that geology has made to comparative anatomy. Baron Cuvier deemed “its structure to have been the most singular, and its characters the most monstrous, that had been yet discovered amid the ruins of a former world.” To the head of a lizard it united the teeth of a crocodile, a neck of enormous length, resembling the body of a serpent, a trunk and tail having the proportions of an ordinary quadruped, the ribs of a chameleon, and the paddles of a whale. “Such,” writes Dr. Buckland, “are the strange combinations of form and structure in the Plesiosaurus, a genus, the remains of which, after interment for thousands of years amidst the wreck of millions of extinct inhabitants of the ancient earth, are at length recalled to light by the researches of the geologist, and submitted to our examination, in nearly as perfect a state as the bones of species that are now existing upon the earth.” (Op. cit., vol. v. p. 203).

The first remains of this animal were discovered in the lias of Lyme Regis, about the year 1823, and formed the subject of the paper by the Rev. Mr. Conybeare (now Dean of Llandaff), and Mr. (now Sir Henry) De la Beche, in which the genus was established and named Plesiosaurus (from the Greek words, _plesios_ and _sauros_, signifying “near” or “allied to,” and “lizard”), because the authors saw that it was more nearly allied to the lizard than was the Ichthyosaurus from the same formation.

The entire and undisturbed skeletons of several individuals, of different species, have since been discovered, fully confirming the sagacious restorations by the original discoverers of the _Plesiosaurus_. Of these species three have been selected as the subjects of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins’s reconstructions and representations of the living form of the strange reptiles.

No. 15.--PLESIOSAURUS MACROCEPHALUS.

The first of these has been called, from the relatively larger size of the head, the _Plesiosaurus macrocephalus_ (No. 15), (Gr. _macros_, long, _cephale_, head). The entire length of the animal, as indicated by the largest remains, and as given in the restoration, is eighteen feet, the length of the head being two feet, that of the neck six feet; the greatest girth of the body yields seven feet.

Although Baron Cuvier and Dr. Buckland both rightly allude to the resemblance of the fins or paddles of the Plesiosaur to those of the whale, yet this most remarkable difference must be borne in mind, that, whereas the whale tribe have never more than one pair of fins, the Plesiosaurs have always two pairs, answering to the fore and hind limbs of land quadrupeds; and the fore-pair of fins, corresponding to those in the whale, differed by being more firmly articulated, through the medium of collar-bones (clavicles), and of two other very broad and strong bones (called coracoids), to the trunk (thorax), whereby they were the better enabled to move the animal upon dry land.

Remains of the _Plesiosaurus macrocephalus_ have been discovered in the lias of Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire, and of Weston, in Somersetshire.

No. 16.--PLESIOSAURUS DOLICHODEIRUS.

Further to the left, on the shore of the Secondary Island, is a restoration of the _Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus_, or Long-necked Plesiosaurus (No. 16). The head in this remarkable species is smaller, and the neck proportionally longer than in the _Plesiosaurus macrocephalus_. The remains of the Long-necked Plesiosaur have been found chiefly at Lyme Regis, in Dorsetshire. The well known specimen of an almost entire skeleton, formerly in the possession of His Grace the Duke of Buckingham, is now in the British Museum.

No. 17.--PLESIOSAURUS HAWKINSII.

The most perfect skeletons of the Plesiosaurus are those that have been wrought out of the lias at Street, near Glastonbury, by Mr. Thomas Hawkins, F.G.S., and which have been purchased by the trustees of the British Museum. A restoration is given by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, at No. 17, of a species with characters somewhat intermediate between the Large-headed and Long-necked Plesiosaurs, and which has been called, after its discoverer, _Plesiosaurus Hawkinsii_.

The Plesiosaurs breathed air like the existing crocodiles and the whale tribe, and appear to have lived in shallow seas and estuaries. That the Long-necked Sea-lizard was aquatic is evident from the form of its paddles; and that it was marine is almost equally so, from the remains with which its fossils are universally associated; that it may have occasionally visited the shore, the resemblance of its extremities to those of a turtle leads us to conjecture; its motion, however, must have been very awkward on land; its long neck must have impeded its progress through the water, presenting a striking contrast to the organisation which so admirably adapted the Ichthyosaurus to cut its swift course through the waves. “May it not, therefore, be concluded that it swam upon, or near the surface,” asks its accomplished discoverer, “arching back its long neck like a swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish that happened to float within its reach? It may perhaps have lurked in shoal-water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed, and, raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies; while the length and flexibility of its neck may have compensated for the want of strength in its jaws, and its incapacity for swift motion through the water, by the suddenness and agility of the attack which it enabled it to make on every animal fitted for its prey which came within its reach.”[47]

[47] “Transactions of the Geological Society,” Second Series, vi. 503. 1841.

For the Secondary Island three species of the Plesiosaurus have been restored, the _Plesiosaurus macrocephalus_, the _Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus_ (Gr. _dolichos_, long, _deire_, neck), and the _Plesiosaurus Hawkinsii_. The name “long-necked” was given to the second of these species before it was known that many other species with long and slender necks had existed in the seas of the same ancient period: the third species is named after Mr. Thomas Hawkins, F.G.S., the gentleman by whose patience, zeal, and skill, the British Museum has been enriched with so many entire skeletons of these most extraordinary extinct sea-lizards.

The remains of all these species occur in the lias at Lyme Regis, and at Street, near Glastonbury; but the _Plesiosaurus Hawkinsii_ is the most abundant in the latter locality.

NEW RED SANDSTONE.

“Trias” is an arbitrary term applied in geology to the upper division of a vast series of red loams, shales, and sandstones, interposed between the lias and the coal, in the midland and western counties of England. This series is collectively called the “New Red Sandstone formation,” to distinguish it from the “Old Red Sandstone formation,” of similar or identical mineral character, which lies immediately beneath the coal.

The animals which have been restored and placed on the lowest formation of the Secondary Island, are peculiar to the “triassic,” or upper division of the “New Red Sandstone” series, which division consists, in England, of saliferous (salt-including) shales and sandstones, from 1000 to 1500 feet thick in Lancashire and Cheshire, answering to the formation called “Keuper-sandstone” by the German geologists; and of sandstone and quartzose conglomerate of 600 feet in thickness, answering to the German “Bunter-sandstone.”

The largest and most characteristic animals of the trias are reptiles of the order

BATRACHIA.

The name of this order is from the Greek word _batrachos_, signifying a frog: and the order is represented in the present animal-population of England by a few diminutive species of frogs, toads, and newts, or water-salamanders. But, at the period of the deposition of the new red sandstone, in the present counties of Warwick and Cheshire, the shores of the ancient sea, which were then formed by that sandy deposit, were trodden by reptiles, having the essential bony characters of the Batrachia, but combining these with other bony characters of crocodiles and lizards; and exhibiting both under a bulk which is made manifest by the restoration of the largest known species, (No. 16), occupying the extreme promontory of the Island, illustrative of the lowest and oldest deposits of the secondary series of rocks. The species in question is called the--

No. 18.--LABYRINTHODON SALAMANDROIDES,

or the Salamander-like Labyrinthodon; the latter term being from the Greek, signifying the peculiar structure of the teeth, which differ from all other reptiles in the huge Batrachia in question, by reason of the complex labyrinthic interblending of the different substances composing the teeth. The skull of the Labyrinthodon is attached to the neck-bones by two joints or condyles, and the teeth are situated both on the proper jaw-bones, and on the bone of the roof of the mouth called “vomer:” both these characters are only found at the present day in the frogs and salamanders. The hind-foot of the Labyrinthodon was also, as in the toad and frog, much larger than the fore-foot; and the innermost digit in both was short and turned in, like a thumb.

Consecutive impressions of the prints of these feet have been traced for many steps in succession (as is accurately represented in the new red sandstone part of the Secondary Island) in quarries of that formation in Warwickshire, Cheshire, and also in Lancashire, more especially at a quarry of a whitish quartzose sandstone at Storton Hill, a few miles from Liverpool. The foot-marks are partly concave and partly in relief; the former are seen upon the upper surface of the sandstone slabs, but those in relief are only upon the lower surfaces, being, in fact, natural casts, formed on the subjacent foot-prints as in moulds. The impressions of the hind-foot are generally eight inches in length and five inches in width: near each large footstep, and at a regular distance--about an inch and a half--before it, a smaller print of the fore-foot, four inches long and three inches wide, occurs. The footsteps follow each other in pairs, each pair in the same line, at intervals of about fourteen inches from pair to pair. The large as well as the small steps show the thumb-like toe alternately on the right and left side, each step making a print of five toes.

Foot-prints of corresponding form but of smaller size have been discovered in the quarry at Storton Hill, imprinted on five thin beds of clay, lying one upon another in the same quarry, and separated by beds of sandstone. From the lower surface of the sandstone layers, the solid casts of each impression project in high relief, and afford models of the feet, toes, and claws of the animals which trod on the clay.

Similar foot-prints were first observed in Saxony, at the village of Hessberg, near Hillburghausen, in several quarries of a gray quartzose sandstone, alternating with beds of red sandstone, and of the same geological age as the sandstones of England that had been trodden by the same strange animal. The German geologist, who first described them, proposed the name of _Cheirotherium_ (Gr. _cheir_, the hand, _therion_, beast), for the great unknown animal that had left the foot-prints, in consequence of the resemblance, both of the fore and hind feet, to the impression of a human hand, and Dr. Kaup conjectured that the animal might be a large species of the opossum-kind. The discovery, however, of fossil skulls, jaws, teeth, and a few other bones in the sandstones exhibiting the footprints in question, has rendered it more probable that both the footprints and the fossils are evidences of the same kind of huge extinct Batrachian reptiles.

An entire skull of the largest species discovered in the new red sandstones of Wurtemberg; a lower jaw of the same species found in the same formation in Warwickshire; some vertebræ, and a few fragments of bones of the limbs, have served, with the indications of size and shape of the trunk of the animal yielded by the series of consecutive foot-prints, as the basis of the restoration of the _Labyrinthodon salamandroides_, in the Secondary Island. It is to be understood, however, that, with the exception of the head, the form of the animal is necessarily more or less conjectural.

Nos. 19 & 20.--LABYBINTHODON PACHYGNATHUS.

This name, signifying the Thick-jawed Labyrinthodon, was given by its discoverer to a species of these singular Batrachia, found in the new red sandstone of Warwickshire, and which bears to the largest species the proportion exhibited by the head and fore-part of the body, as emerging from the water, for which parts alone the fossils hitherto discovered justify the restoration.[48]

[48] Conybeare, Geol. Trans., i. 388.

Nos. 21 & 22.--DICYNODON.

In 1844 Mr. Andrew G. Bain, who had been employed in the construction of military roads in the colony of the Cape of Good Hope, discovered, in the tract of country extending northwards from the county of Albany, about 450 miles east of Cape Town, several nodules or lumps of a kind of sandstone, which, when broken, displayed, in most instances, evidences of fossil bones, and usually of a skull with two large projecting teeth. Accordingly, these evidences of ancient animal life in South Africa were first notified to English geologists by Mr. Bain under the name of “Bidentals;” and the specimens transmitted by him were submitted at his request to Professor Owen for examination. The results of the comparisons thereupon instituted went to show that there had formerly existed in South Africa, and from geological evidence, probably, in a great salt-water lake or inland sea, since converted into dry land, a race of reptilian animals presenting in the construction of their skull characters of the crocodile, the tortoise, and the lizard, coupled with the presence of a pair of huge sharp-pointed tusks, growing downwards, one from each side of the upper jaw, like the tusks of the mammalian morse or walrus. No other kind of teeth were developed in these singular animals: the lower jaw was armed, as in the tortoise, by a trenchant sheath of horn. Some bones of the back, or vertebræ, by the hollowness of the co-adapted articular surfaces, indicate these reptiles to have been good swimmers, and probably to have habitually existed in water; but the construction of the bony passages of the nostrils proves that they must have come to the surface to breathe air.

Some extinct plants allied to the Lepidodendron, with other fossils, render it probable that the sandstones containing the Dicynodont reptiles were of the same geological age as those that have revealed the remains of the Labyrinthodonts in Europe.

The generic name Dicynodon is from the Greek words signifying “two tusks or canine teeth.” Three species of this genus have been demonstrated from the fossils transmitted by Mr. Bain.

The _Dicynodon lacerticeps_, or Lizard-headed Dicynodon, attained the bulk of a walrus; the form of the head and tusks is correctly given in the restoration (No. 21); the trunk has been added conjecturally, to illustrate the strange combination of characters manifested in the head.

A second species, with a head so formed as to have given the animal somewhat of the physiognomy of an owl, has been partially restored at No. 22.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRYERS.

THE POMPEIAN COURT IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

DESCRIBED BY GEORGE SCHARF, JUN., F.S.A., F.R.S.L., &c.

CRYSTAL PALACE LIBRARY; AND BRADBURY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET, LONDON.

1854.

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS TO THE CRYSTAL PALACE COMPANY, WHITEFRIARS.

PREFACE.

In the following account of the Pompeian Court, my chief aim has been to combine simplicity with truth; relying for success on that interest which so alluring a subject is certain to create. With much gratification I avail myself of the privilege granted to an author, in his preface, of returning my best thanks to those friends who have lent me their aid in this arduous undertaking. Mr. Digby Wyatt is entitled to the gratitude of all engaged in the works of art at the Crystal Palace for the opportunities he has afforded to each artist for the display of his particular talents, and I sincerely thank him for his kindness in accompanying me through the building and affording minute information to my numerous enquiries when he could with difficulty spare the time. I beg also cordially to thank Mr. Samuel Phillips for important suggestions respecting the conduct of my work, and for his interest and encouragement in its progress. Mr. Edward Falkener is entitled to my best acknowledgments, not only for the valuable assistance rendered in his published account of a Pompeian house, but for his kindness in looking over the proofs of these pages before they were committed to press. It is to be hoped that many of his observations may appear at greater length in the next edition of this Handbook, without prejudice to the magnificent work he is contemplating on the “Domestic Architecture of Pompeii.” I sincerely thank my friend, Mr. James Morant Lockyer for the benefit of his long architectural sojourn in Pompeii; regretting, at the same time, that the public has not had the advantage of his extensive knowledge and experience.

The excellent paintings produced here in the Pompeian Court, under the direction of Signor Abbate require no commendation from me; but I feel that I shall be only expressing the sentiment of others in wishing that we may at some future period see an extension of this ancient palace, or another series of apartments in which the same abilities shall afford us accurate copies of still more of the pictorial celebrities--such as the Theseus and the Minotaur, and Hercules and Telephus, found at Herculaneum; the Sacrifice of Iphigenia and the Anger of Achilles, from the House of the Tragic Poet; also the Zephyrus and Flora, and some of the picture mosaics, the Choragus one, for instance, and the far-famed Alexander and Darius at the battle of Issus.

THE POMPEIAN COURT.

DESCRIBED BY GEORGE SCHARF, JUN.

INTRODUCTION.

DESTRUCTION OF HERCULANEUM AND POMPEII.

“Many a calamity has befallen the world ere now, yet none like this replete with instruction and delight for remote generations.”--GOETHE.

Near the modern city of Naples, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, once stood the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Whilst the former was considerably removed from the volcano, the latter was seated immediately at the base of the mountain, on a promontory projecting into the bay.

Vesuvius was not considered dangerous by the ancient occupants of the soil, as no eruption had ever been known to take place. Strabo noticed the igneous character of its rocks, but the whole district being covered with vines and plantations, undisturbed since the memory of man, he thence assumed the fires to be extinct for want of fuel. Even the sides of the mountain were overgrown with trees, and the summit alone continued barren and rough. The inhabitants of the neighbourhood were probably less inclined to consider the possibility of danger to themselves from the existence of two active volcanoes not far from them which seemed to serve as a vent for all subterranean commotions--the one, Mount Ætna; the other, Mount Epopeus in the island now called Ischia. Ætna, the majestic snowy mountain of Sicily, more than three times the height of Vesuvius, has been known, from the earliest times, as an active volcano; and many passages in Æschylus, Pindar, Thucydides, and Diodorus Siculus might be adduced, commemorating particular eruptions, &c. Pausanias mentions an instance of the piety of two youths who saved their parents at Catana (Book 10., ch. xxviii.) during the descent of the lava which threatened to surround them. In the year 73 B.C., Spartacus, a fugitive slave, at the head of a troop of gladiators and revolters, encamped on the summit of Vesuvius, where they were blockaded. The natural ruggedness of the place, and the density of the vines, favoured their subsequent escape. This is the earliest mention of the actual appearance of the volcano. The natural beauties of the district, then called Campania, are glorified by most writers; it was more particularly celebrated for its fertility and the luxuriant magnificence of its scenery.

The convulsions of nature have indeed changed the outline of the mountain, but the varied charms of the beautiful coast remain in undiminished attraction. Deep shades and crystal streamlets, sunny banks and refreshing groves, display the natural loveliness of a locality, favoured with the most luxuriant vegetation, and the finest climate in the world. These enable us fully to comprehend the pains and trouble bestowed by the ancient Romans in building villas and marine residences in so charming a situation. Thus, in the earliest times of the empire, the more wealthy and luxurious Romans established what we moderns should denominate watering places, for fashionable resort, on the coast, Baiæ, Dicæarchia, afterwards Puteoli, Cumæ, Neapolis, and Herculaneum, but the warm springs of the first two rendered them the most favourite resorts, and they became the Bath and Brighton of that era.

Lucullus, Pompey and Cæsar, had villas at Baiæ, Nero spent much time there, and Caligula contributed to the celebrity of the scene by his extraordinary bridge of boats. Hadrian died at Baiæ; and, at a later period, Alexander Severus erected many villas in the same neighbourhood. Some of the most splendid palaces were raised upon artificial foundations in the sea itself, and nothing could exceed the luxury and indolence indulged in by the visitors to these regions as depicted by some of the later poets. Horace himself speaks of the pleasant Baiæ as the most delicious place in the world.[49] And so it may have been, and all the neighbouring cities of the bay must have partaken more or less of the same glories. Pompeii was somewhat removed from these enchanting scenes, being on the other side of the bay of Naples, and the situation was not so pleasant as that of its fellow-sufferer Herculaneum. This city stood on a promontory, open, as Strabo says, to the south wind, which made it especially healthy. In fact, the art and style of everything found at Herculaneum show it to have been the resort of a superior class of people. Pompeii is supposed to have stood on the banks of the river Sarnus. The town itself was raised upon a considerable eminence so as to be protected in a great measure from the floods that at certain times of the year devastated the surrounding plain.

[49] “Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis prælucet amœnis.”--Ep. bk. i. 1, line 83.

The peace and tranquillity of these beautiful regions were first disturbed by natural convulsions in the year 63 A.D. A violent earthquake on the 16th February, threw down many parts of Pompeii, and seriously injured Herculaneum; six hundred sheep were swallowed up at once, statues were split, and many persons became insane. From this period, the Pompeians were disturbed by frequent shocks of earthquake; between the first symptoms in 63 and the dreadful catastrophe which involved their destruction, evidences still exist of the persevering endeavours of the inhabitants at restoration and repair. Many mosaics have been found, which display traces of a very different order of workmanship, in, the repair of damage caused by the earthquake, from that employed in their original construction.

In the reign of the emperor Titus, A.D. 79, the celebrated eruption of Vesuvius broke out, suddenly ejecting dense clouds of ashes and pumice-stones, beneath which Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ were completely buried. Awful as such a phenomenon must at all times appear, the event was still more appalling to the inhabitants as they were unable, in the confusion of the moment, to comprehend the source whence these horrors proceeded. An eye witness has fortunately left a detailed account of the event in two letters which are still preserved. We insert the greater part of them as best exhibiting the realities of the scene and the excitement of the unfortunate sufferers.

PLINY’S LETTER TO TACITUS.

“Your request that I would send you an account of my uncle’s death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments; for if this action shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory of it, I am well assured, will be rendered for ever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune, which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins, and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him an everlasting remembrance; notwithstanding he has himself composed many and lasting works, yet I am persuaded the mentioning of him in your immortal writings will greatly contribute to eternise his name. Happy I esteem those to be whom Providence has distinguished with the abilities either of doing such actions as are worthy of being related, or of relating them in a manner worthy of being read; but doubly happy are they who are blessed with both these uncommon talents. In the number of which my uncle, as his own writings and your history will evidently prove, may justly be ranked. It is with extreme willingness, therefore, I execute your commands; and should indeed have claimed the task if you had not enjoined it.

“He was at that time with the fleet under his command at Misenum. On the 24th of August, about one in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. He had just returned from taking the benefit of the sun, and after bathing himself in cold water, and taking a slight repast, was retired to his study. He immediately arose and went out up on an eminence from whence he might more distinctly view this uncommon appearance. It was not at that distance discernible from what mountain this cloud issued, but it was found afterwards to ascend from Mount Vesuvius. I cannot give you a more exact description of its figure, than by resembling it to that of a pine tree, for it shot up a great height in the form of a trunk, which extended itself at the top into sort of branches, occasioned, I imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upwards, or the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in this manner:--it appeared sometimes bright and sometimes dark and spotted, as it was either more or less impregnated with earth and cinder. This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle’s philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, and gave me the liberty, if I thought it proper, to attend him; I rather chose to continue my studies; for, as it happened, he had given me an employment of that kind. As he was coming out of the house he received a note from Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm at the imminent danger which threatened her; for her villa being situated at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there was no way to escape but by sea; she earnestly entreated him, therefore, to come to her assistance. He accordingly changed his first design, and what he began with a philosophical, he pursued with an heroical turn of mind. He ordered the galleys to put to sea, and went himself on board with an intention of assisting, not only Rectina, but several others; for the villas stand extremely thick upon that beautiful coast. When hastening to the place from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steered his direct course to the point of danger, and with so much calmness and presence of mind, as to be able to make and dictate his observations upon the motion and figure of that dreadful scene. He was now so nigh the mountain, that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice stones, and black pieces of burning rock. They were likewise in danger not only of being aground by the sudden retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which rolled down from the mountain, and obstructed all the shore. Here he stopped to consider whether he should return back again; to which the pilot advising him, ‘Fortune,’ said he, ‘befriends the brave; carry me to Pomponianus.’ Pomponianus was then at Stabiæ, separated by a gulf, which the sea, after several insensible windings, forms upon the shore. He had already sent his baggage on board; for though he was not at that time in actual danger, yet being within the view of it, and indeed extremely near, if it should in the least increase, he was determined to put to sea as soon as the wind should change. It was favourable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pomponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation. He embraced him with tenderness, encouraged and exhorted him to keep up his spirits, and the more to dissipate his fears, he ordered, with an air of unconcern, the bath to be got ready; when, after having bathed, he sat down to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least, what is equally heroic, with all the appearance of it. In the meanwhile, the eruption from Mount Vesuvius flamed out in several places with much violence, which the darkness of the night contributed to render still more visible and dreadful. But my uncle, in order to soothe the apprehensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning of the villages, which the country people had abandoned to the flames; after this he retired to rest, and it is most certain he was so little discomposed as to fall into a deep sleep, for being pretty fat, and breathing hard, those who attended without, actually heard him snore. The court which led to his apartment being now almost filled with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time longer, it would have been impossible for him to have made his way out; it was thought proper therefore to awaken him. He got up and went to Pomponianus and the rest of his company, who were unconcerned enough to think of going to bed. They consulted together whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, which now shook from side to side with frequent and violent concussions, or fly to the open fields, where the calcined stones and cinders, though light indeed, yet fell in large showers, and threatened destruction. In this distress they resolved for the fields, as the less dangerous situation of the two. A resolution which, while the rest of the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They went out then having pillows tied upon their heads with napkins, and this was their whole defence against the storm of stones that fell round them. It was now day everywhere else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed than in the most obscure night; which, however, was in some degree dissipated by torches and other lights of various kinds. They thought proper to go down farther upon the shore, to observe if they might safely put out to sea, but they found the waves still run extremely high and boisterous. There my uncle having drank a draught or two of cold water, threw himself down upon a cloth which was spread for him, when immediately the flames, and a strong smell of sulphur, which was the forerunner of them, dispersed the rest of the company, and obliged him to arise. He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his servants, and instantly fell down, dead, suffocated, as I conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapour, having always had weak lungs, and frequently subject to a difficulty of breathing. As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any marks of violence upon it, exactly in the same posture that he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead.

“During all this time my mother and I, who were at Misenum--but as this has no connection with your history, so your inquiry went no farther than concerning my uncle’s death; with that therefore I will put an end to my letter. Suffer me only to add, that I have faithfully related to you what I was either an eyewitness of myself, or received immediately after the accident happened, and before there was time to vary the truth.

“You will choose out of this narrative such circumstances as shall be most suitable to your purpose; for there is a great difference between what is proper for a letter and a history--between writing to a friend and writing to the public. Farewell.”

TO CORNELIUS TACITUS.

“The letter which, in compliance with your request, I wrote concerning the death of my uncle, has raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and dangers attended me, while I continued at Misenum; for there, I think, the account in my former broke off. Though my shocked soul recoils, my tongue shall tell. My uncle having left us, I pursued the studies which prevented my going with him, till it was time to bathe. After which I went to supper, and from thence to bed, where my sleep was greatly broken and disturbed. There had been for many days before some shocks of an earthquake, which the less surprised us as they are extremely frequent in Campania; but they were so particularly violent that night, that they not only shook every thing about us, but seemed indeed to threaten total destruction. My mother flew to my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her. We went out into a small court belonging to the house, which separated the sea from the buildings. As I was at that time but eighteen years of age, I know not whether I should call my behaviour in this dangerous juncture courage or rashness; but I took up Livy and amused myself with turning over that author, and even making extracts from him, as if all about me had been in full security. While we were in this posture, a friend of my uncle’s who was just come from Spain to pay a visit, joined us, and observing me sitting by my mother with a book in my hand, greatly condemned her calmness, at the same time that he reproved me for my careless security; nevertheless I still went on with my author. Though it was now morning, the light was exceedingly faint and languid; the buildings all around us tottered, and though we stood upon open ground, yet as the place was narrow and confined, there was no remaining there without certain and great danger; we therefore resolved to quit the town. The people followed us in the utmost consternation, and (as to the mind distracted with terror, every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) pressed in great crowds about us in our way out. Being got at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still, in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The chariots which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backwards and forwards, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady, even by supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motion of the earth; it is certain, at least, the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. On the other side a black and dreadful cloud, bursting with an igneous serpentine vapour, darted out a long train of fire resembling flashes of lightning, but much larger. Upon this our Spanish friend, whom I mentioned above, addressing himself to my mother and me with greater warmth and earnestness, ‘If your brother and your uncle,’ said he, ‘is safe, he certainly wishes you may be so too; but if he perished, it was his desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him. Why, therefore, do you delay your escape a moment?’ ‘We could never think of our own safety,’ we said, ‘while we were uncertain of his.’ Hereupon our friend left us, and withdrew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. Soon afterwards the cloud seemed to descend and cover the whole ocean; as indeed it entirely hid the island of Caprea and the promontory of Misenum. My mother strongly conjured me to make my escape at any rate, which, as I was young, I might easily do; as for herself, she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of that sort impossible; however, she should willingly meet death, if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to leave her, and taking her by the hand, I led her on: she complied with great reluctance, and not without many reproaches to herself for retarding my flight. The ashes now begun to fall upon us, though in no great quantity; I turned my head, and observed behind us a thick smoke, which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed, while we had yet any light, to turn out of the high road, lest we should be pressed to death in the dark, by the crowd that followed us. We had scarce stepped out of the path, when a darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up, and all the lights extinct. Nothing then was to be heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the cries of men; some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some wishing to die, from the very fear of dying; some lifting up their hands to the gods; but the greater part imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy both the gods and the world together. Among these there are some who augmented the real terrors by imaginary ones, and made the frighted multitude falsely believe that Misenum was actually in flames. At length a glimmering light appeared, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was), than the return of day; however, the fire fell at a distance from us: then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the heap; I might boast that, during all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expression of fear escaped from me; had not my support been founded in that miserable, though strong consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the world itself. At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated by degrees, like a cloud of smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly, and as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed changed, being covered over with white ashes as with a deep snow. We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear, though, indeed, with a much larger share of the latter; for the earthquake still continued, while several enthusiastic people ran up and down, heightening their own and their friend’s calamities, by terrible predictions. However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened us, had no thoughts of leaving the place till we should receive some account of my uncle.

“And now you will read this narrative without any view of inserting it in your history, of which it is by no means worthy; and indeed you must impute it to your own request, if it shall appear scarce to deserve even the trouble of a letter. Farewell.”

* * * * *

Shortly after the catastrophe all memorials of the devoted cities were lost; discussions on the places they had once occupied were excited only by some obscure passages in classical authors. Five successive eruptions contributed to bury them still deeper under the surface, and the sixth, which occurred in the year 1036, is the first instance of an emission of lava. Before that time the only agents of desolation were showers of sand, cinders, and scoriæ, together with loose fragments of rock. Volcanic ashes poured out in a current have been known to darken the air for hours, and even for days. Such must have been the nature of the phenomenon which the younger Pliny saw and compared to a lofty pine. Dion Cassius states that the ashes of this eruption were carried as far as Africa, and that the dust was so abundant as even to darken the air in the neighbourhood of Rome. Steam poured out in vast quantities, and uniting with the ashes that fell upon Herculaneum, formed a torrent of mud, imbedding all in solid tufa, whilst the ashes of Pompeii were not impregnated, and all lay in this city loose and unconsolidated. Stones of eight pounds weight fell on Pompeii, whilst Stabiæ was overwhelmed with fragments of about an ounce in weight, which must have drifted in immense quantities. During a later eruption fine ashes were borne by the wind as far as Constantinople. Whilst the ancient cities thus lay buried and forgotten, Neapolis, the residence and burial-place of Virgil,[50] grew into the great modern city of Naples, extending its suburban villages along the shore, and connecting itself by a chain of houses to the very roots of Vesuvius. The next town to Naples is Portici. It contains 6000 inhabitants. Immediately adjoining Portici is the still larger town of Resina, with a population of 11,000 souls. These bustling and much frequented places are built upon the lava which covers Herculaneum.

[50] See Portrait Gallery, No. 121.

DISCOVERY OF THE ANCIENT CITIES.

In the year 1689, during some excavations in the plain at the foot of Vesuvius, where it was subsequently proved that Pompeii had flourished, a workman observed the regularity with which successive layers of earth and volcanic matter had been deposited. He compared them to pavements one upon the other; with remains of burnt vegetation, charcoal, and common earth beneath each volcanic deposit. Under one of these dense masses of scoria, dust, and pumice stone, he found large quantities of carbonised timber, locks, and iron work, evidently the remains of habitations, which, together with some old keys, and inscriptions giving the name of the locality, satisfied the learned of the day that they belonged to the ancient city of Pompeii. (Venuti, p. 37. Mém. de l’Académie Fran.; Mém. de Littérature, tom. xv. Des Embrasemens du Mont Vésuve, and also Bianchini, Istoria Universale, Roma, 1699, p. 246. Cochin, p. 31). The discovery created little excitement at the time; the government was indisposed to prosecute the research, and no farther excavation was carried on till the year 1749.

Meanwhile, the accidental sinking of a well in another place brought to light such treasures of art as to induce a systematic exploration in a more profitable locality. This was in the neighbourhood of Naples, where after seventeen centuries the city of Herculaneum was once more rescued from oblivion. The circumstances which led to the discovery are briefly these. The prince D’Elbœuf, of the house of Lorraine, came to Naples in 1706 (Cochin, p. 35), and ordered the construction of a marine villa for himself at Portici, in 1711. (Venuti, p. 38. Gori, Admiranda, p. 39.) He had a Frenchman in his service, who possessed the art of making a durable stucco from pulverised marble, and as many fragments of antique marbles as possible were collected for the manufacture of his composition. One day a countryman presented himself, asserting that in sinking a well at Resina (Venuti, p. 39), he had discovered a variety of precious marbles, some of which he had brought with him as specimens. These marbles were so beautiful and rare, that the prince was induced to purchase of the man the right of further excavation, and he immediately commenced a systematic course of exploration upon that spot. The stucco prepared by the Frenchman was not only an imitation of precious marbles, but also a cement similar to that employed by the ancients. Most of the antique buildings were so plastered internally, as it was harder and more durable than marble in its natural state. The excavators, therefore, were more delighted when they found large plain slabs and shafts of columns than elaborately carved foliage and statues, because the latter afforded them a smaller quantity of actual material. Stendardo was appointed to direct the works which were carried on branching sideways from the well, just above the level of the water; (Gori, p. 40. Venuti, p. 39. Cochin, p. 37;) at the expiration of two days, they found a statue of Hercules, evidently from a Grecian chisel, and they remarked with astonishment that it had formerly been restored (Gori, p. 40). Some days after this they came upon a female statue, which was at once pronounced to be a Cleopatra (Gori, p. 40). They next extricated a large square mass of marble, and upon removing a crust of bituminous matter it was found to be the architrave of a gateway, with letters of bronze inlaid into the surface. The inscription was

APPIVS. PVLCHER. CAII. FILIVS. VIR. EPVLONVM. (Venuti, p. 39.)

Many columns of variegated alabaster were next discovered, and this led to the excavation of a circular temple, with twenty-four columns, and statues of Greek marble between them (Gori, p. 41). The pavement of this building was constructed of that rich yellow marble, called _Giallo antico_, and many columns of the same material lay in the vicinity. Seven of the twelve figures belonging to the temple were female, executed in a superior Grecian style. Prince Elbœuf dispatched them to Vienna as a present to Prince Eugene of Savoy (Venuti, p. 39). The best of these statues were afterwards sold to the King of Poland for 60,000 scudi; they are now at Dresden, and engraved in plates 19 to 26 of Becker’s “Augusteum” (Winckelmann, Werke, vol. ii. p. 135). The prince evidently knew very little of the real value of his discoveries, and during the next five years continued disinterring pieces of mosaic alabaster slabs, and a few statues, some of which decorated his villa, and the rest were sent over to France. Upon the discovery of a beautiful statue of one of the daughters of Balbus, the state interfered, and the Neapolitan government prohibited any further excavations. For thirty years the site was almost forgotten. In 1736, the King Carlo III. (Borbone) resolved to build a palace at Portici, and the ancient well was once more resorted to. The excavations were resumed, and very important results followed.

Animated discussions were still maintained respecting the name of the ancient city, for a city the excavations had already proved it to be. A communication to the Royal Society by a Mr. Sloane, in 1740, exhibits the matter as still in a state of uncertainty. The Marquis Venuti, keeper of the Farnese library which Carlo Borbone had inherited from Rome, was appointed superintendent of the excavations at Resina. He has left minute records of his proceedings both in the “Admiranda Notizia,” 2 et. seq., of Gori, and in his own work published at Venice and London, 1750. He commenced 12th November, 1738, by carrying on a kind of tunnel laterally from the old well. In a short time (Venuti, p. 40. Gori, p. 42) two bronze equestrian statues were found, and soon after three full length marble figures, larger than life, of Roman dignitaries, dressed in the toga, with massive piers of brick between, plastered with stucco, and painted with arabesques in various colours. The excavators had now reached the interior of the theatre, which the numerous seats and steps clearly indicated. An inscription, moreover, on the architrave contained part of the word Theatre, the name of the person at whose cost the building was erected, and that of the architect. A second inscription on the corresponding architrave of the opposite side is almost a repetition:--

(Gori, p. 42. Venuti, p. 42.)

These architraves covered the side entrances to the orchestra, and both of them supported a colossal group in bronze of a chariot and two horses. The central group of the building was a quadriga, and probably represented the emperor in his chariot with four horses. All these bronze statues had been gilt. Some fine columns of rosso antico were transported to the cathedral of Naples, and others to the Royal Palace; they appear to have adorned the proscenium (Venuti, p. 71). The theatre was one of the most perfect specimens of ancient architecture. It had, from the floor, upwards of eighteen rows of seats (Gori, 44), and above these three other rows which seem to have been intended for the female part of the audience, and were covered with a portico to screen them from the rays of the sun. Statues of Drusus and Antonia, and of the nine Muses, were found in other parts of the building. A bronze colossal statue of Titus filled with lead (Gori, p. 45) was so heavy that twelve men were unable to move it. Many other bronze statues of municipal authorities and benefactors were found with their respective inscriptions.

The theatre was capable of containing 8000 persons. Nearly the whole of its surface, as well as the arched walks leading to the seats, was cased with marble. The area or pit was floored with thick squares of _giallo antico_, the beautiful marble of a yellowish hue. The pedestal, of white marble, which supported a chariot and four bronze horses, is still to be seen in its place; but the group itself had been crushed and broken in pieces by the immense weight of lava which fell on it. The fragments having been collected, might have been easily reunited, but they were carelessly thrown into a corner, like old iron, and part of them were stolen. The body of one horse and part of the charioteer, being deemed useless, were accordingly fused, to be converted into two large framed medallions of their Neapolitan Majesties. The remaining fragments were cast into the vaults of the royal palace; and, at last, it was resolved to make the best use of what was left; which was, to convert the four horses into one, by taking a fore leg of one of them, a hinder leg of another, the head of a third, and where the breach was irremediable, to cast a new piece. To this contrivance, the famous bronze horse now in the Museum owes its existence; and, considering its patchwork origin, still conveys a high idea of the skill of the ancient artist. A pompous inscription upon its pedestal records the circumstances of its construction (Bronzi di Ercolano, vol. ii., page 255).

On the south side of the theatre, stood a basilica or public building which contained the celebrated equestrian statues of the Balbi--of one block of marble (Gori, p. 59),--These fine statues possess the additional value of having finally set at rest the question respecting the proper name of the city. On the front of the pedestals is inscribed--

M. NONIO. M. F. BALBO. PR. PRO. COS. HERCVLANENSES.

(Gerhard, Neapel. p. 22. Gori, p. 167. Venuti, p. 59.)

The certainty of this city having been the ancient Herculaneum is said to have materially increased the energy of the excavators. In the same basilica were found the famous pictures of Hercules and Telephus, Theseus and the Minotaur, and many others, together with bronze statues of Nero and Germanicus, and a Vespasian, with two sitting figures of marble, nine feet high. The streets of the city were paved with blocks of lava, they were flanked with causeways, and lined with porticos. The private buildings, which resembled those of Pompeii, were very difficult of access, from the nature of the material that overwhelmed them, and could only be examined in small portions at a time. No maps of sufficient accuracy have been laid down of the earliest excavations, and it will be better to reserve all accounts of domestic arrangements till we can illustrate them by the Pompeian remains. One large villa, however, seems to have been a very important structure. It was surrounded by a garden enclosed within a square wall and ditch. The floors were ornamented with beautiful mosaics and the halls contained a rich variety of busts and statues. One of the chambers served the purpose of a bath; another, supposed to have been a sacrarium, was painted with serpents, and within it was found a brazen tripod, containing cinders and ashes; but the most curious discovery of all, was an apartment in this villa used as a library, and fitted up with wooden presses around the walls, about six feet in height; a double row of presses stood in the middle of the room, so as to admit of a free passage on every side. The wood of which the presses had been made was burned to a cinder, and gave way at the first touch; but the volumes, composed of a much more perishable substance, the Egyptian or Syracusan papyrus, were, although completely carbonised, through the effect of the heat, still so far preserved as to admit of their removal. A number of these supposed pieces of charcoal were at first carried off, which by accidental fracture exposed the remains of letters and proved to be so many ancient manuscripts. The Greek manuscripts consisted of rolls scarcely a foot in length, and but two or three inches in thickness. Some had a label in front, at one end of the roll, with the name of the work or the author, which was visible from its place in the library.[51]

[51] See a Pompeian painting described at p. 50, Cubiculum 3.

The sixteen centuries during which the substances had been crushed together, rendered it almost hopeless to unroll, and still less to decipher them; but Camillo Paderni devoted twelve days to the occupation underground, and succeeded in carrying away 337 manuscripts. Almost all are in Greek, very few in Latin, and some of the rolls are forty or fifty feet in length. The lines are arranged in columns across the shortest surface, as in our newspapers, each line extending only about two or three inches in length. The greater part of the works in this collection relate to Epicurean philosophy. Their decipherment has naturally occupied much of the attention of the learned, and many of the manuscripts have been published at Oxford.

The condition of Herculaneum was at the period of its discovery more interesting and much more worthy the notice of the traveller than it is at present. The object of its excavation having unfortunately been confined to the discovery of statues, paintings, and other curiosities, and not carried on with a view to lay open the city, and thus to ascertain the features of its buildings and streets, most of the latter were again filled up with rubbish as soon as they were divested of everything moveable. Even the marble was torn from the temples.

Herculaneum may therefore be said to have been overwhelmed a second time by its modern discoverers; and the appearance it previously presented can now only be ascertained from the accounts of those who beheld it in a more perfect state. The existence of the large towns of Portici and Resina overhead render it impossible for many parts of the excavations to remain open to the sky; one portion, however, was allowed to be so until the sinking of the main road, subject to incessant traffic, compelled the government to have the undercuttings filled in, and the apertures blocked up. A part of the city nearer to the mountain has been thrown open and the sun is again permitted to shine upon gardens and habitations now desolate and mouldering.

From the hard nature of the rock at Herculaneum, the city was for a long time supposed to have been buried in lava, and the darkness and obscurity of the passages prevented the discovery of the truth. But now, since daylight has been admitted, the whole mass is found to be nothing more than hard tufa, rendered, at the lower parts, still more compact by the percolation of water, which in all cases leaves the finest possible sediment. Lava is stone that has been actually melted, and flows over the surface in the same way as molten iron issues from a furnace. The beds of real lava may be easily distinguished in the upper levels of the earth laid open in these excavations. All the timber of the houses has been completely reduced to charcoal, but every beam was found perfect as to shape and in its proper position; many of the bronzes, however, were melted. These effects seem to be the result of an intense heat diffused through the entire mass at a subsequent period; for, at the time of the first eruption, great quantities of boiling water appear to have been mixed with the fine dust and scoria, the same materials that fell dry and loose upon Pompeii.

An entrance from the road at Resina to the excavations was formed in 1750. It is still the only means of access to the most important buildings, and consists of a narrow passage cut through the solid lava. The ancient city lies at a depth of seventy feet below the modern level.

The great difficulty of excavating Herculaneum, on account of the soil above being occupied by crowded habitations, induced the government to turn their attention more particularly to Pompeii.

“Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the City of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb, all vivid with undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday, not a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floors; in its forum the half-finished columns as left by the workman’s hands; in its gardens the sacrificial tripod; in its halls the chest of treasure; in its baths the strigil; in its theatres the counter of admission; in its saloons the furniture and the lamp; in its triclinia the fragments of the last feast; in its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of faded beauty; and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute, yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life.

“In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through the apertures, until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphoræ for a prolongation of agonised life. The sand, consolidated by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck and bosom of young and round proportions.

“It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been gradually changed into a sulphurous vapour; the inmates of the vaults had rushed to the door to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria without, and, in their attempts to force it, had been suffocated with the atmosphere.

“In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony hand, and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the master of the house, who had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been destroyed either by the vapours or some fragment of stone. Beside some silver vases lay another skeleton, probably of a slave.

“The houses of Sallust and of Pansa, the temple of Isis, with the juggling concealments behind the statues--the lurking place of its holy oracles--are now bared to the gaze of the curious. In one of the chambers of that temple was found a huge skeleton with an axe by the side of it: two walls had been pierced by the axe--the victim could penetrate no farther. In the midst of the city was found another skeleton, by the side of which was a heap of coins and many of the mystic ornaments of the fane of Isis.”[52]

[52] Bulwer’s “Last Days of Pompeii.”

Linen and fishing nets; loaves of bread with the impress of the baker’s name; even fruits, as walnuts, almonds, peach-stones, and chestnuts, were distinctly recognisable. Eggs have been found whole and empty, and a jar of oil had olives still floating in it; the oil burnt upon application of flame, but the fruit was flavourless. Very few jewels were discovered, which shows that the inhabitants had time to escape; a wooden comb was found with teeth on both sides, closer on one side than the other. Lace fabricated of pure gold, a folding parasol similar to those now in use, a case of surgeon’s instruments, balances, sculptors’ tools, chisels and compasses, writing materials, vessels of white cut and coloured glass, coals collected for fuel, and wine still remaining in jars, may all be found in the curious catalogue of articles that had braved the lapse of time. Other circumstances there are which claim our better feelings. At the city gate, the sentinel, faithful to his trust, was found in his sentry box, a skeleton, clothed in

“The very armour he had on,”

when his dreadful doom overtook him; in the barracks, near the triangular forum, malefactors were found in the public stocks; the crumbling remains of prisoners were discovered in the dungeons near the temple of Jupiter, no one in that hour of general horror and confusion having thought of them or of their wretchedness, in being thus immured alive. The bones of the ass, that worked the baker’s mill, were found there; the skeletons of horses remained in the cribs in which they had been stabled for the last time.

The discoveries that had been made long before the arrival of Prince Elbœuf, and which were communicated to the French Academy of Science, 1689, were remembered by the Neapolitan Government, and in the beginning of the year 1749 we have the first authentic reference to the ancient city of Pompeii. “On the 18th of January, at a place called Civita,” so runs the official announcement, “not far from Torre dell’ Annunciata, where the ancient Pompeii may have been, was found an apartment decorated with sixteen charming little dancing females brightly coloured, two centaurs and figures, bands of arabesques forming panels with Cupids in the midst, and twelve fauns dancing on a rope, all upon a black ground.” (Pitture d’Ercolano, vol. i., p. 93, tavole 17 to 28, and vol. iii., tavole 28 to 35 inclusive.) They are very small figures, and have since been removed to the Museo Borbonico. About the same time a labourer, whilst ploughing in the neighbouring fields, found a statue of brass.

Among the earliest buildings excavated at Pompeii was the Amphitheatre; it was cleared in 1755, and seems to have been capable of holding ten thousand people (Pompeiana, p. 259). In the amphitheatre, games were held, gladiators fought for their lives with wild beasts, or with one another, and these savage spectacles were under the particular superintendence of an edile. We are informed by Dion Cassius, that the eruption came on whilst the populace were assembled in the theatre, but which of the theatres is meant, as there were several, remains doubtful. Thus far is certain, that sufficient time was left for escape, as no skeletons were found in either of them. From the seats of this amphitheatre may certainly be obtained the grandest view of the mountain, and if, as Bulwer’s admirable romance “the Last Days of Pompeii” depicts it, the assembly was held on this spot, the first signs of the coming destruction would have been seen by all the multitude. An announcement connected with these performances has since been discovered upon the walls of the Basilica. A placard--the playbill of those times--announced that the troops of gladiators belonging to Ampliatus would contend in the amphitheatre on the 17th of May, and that another exhibition would take place on the 31st, exactly three months before the destruction of the city.

The Temple of Isis was accidentally discovered in 1765, by some workmen employed in making a subterraneous aqueduct to Torre dell’ Annunciata. These discoveries induced Charles III. to transfer his attention exclusively to Pompeii (Pompeiana, p. 5). The Triangular Forum, the Temple of Æsculapius, and the two great theatres were all laid open in the course of two or three successive years. These buildings are all in the same quarter of the town, but quite remote from the great forum and public buildings which were not discovered until 1816.

It is a remarkable fact that Fontana, the great architect, carried a subterraneous canal in 1592 directly under the court of the Temple of Isis. He was employed to convey the waters of the river Sarno to the town of Torre dell’ Annunziata; and it seems wonderful that the existence of this interesting city was not made known at the time.

The situation of Pompeii, as it originally stood upon an elevation surrounded by a fertile plain, is well shown in the accompanying view. The eminence marked in the woodcut by the long pale light mounds on the right between the tower of a farm-house and the base of the volcano, is the site of the city. Pompeii was never buried beneath the surface of the ground; on the contrary, many of its walls were always _conspicuous_, as, for instance, that at the back of the tragic theatre. The locality seems to have been known to the peasants of the vicinity by the name of _civita_ (city). The rains of successive seasons may probably have carried away most of the stones and ashes that fell around the city, whilst the walls of the houses themselves would serve to retain all that had fallen upon them.

Other villas also were excavated at Gragnano, the ancient Stabiæ, and most of their decorations were removed to the Museo Borbonico. The baths discovered at Stabiæ, in 1827, were very interesting. They are described in “Gell’s Pompeiana,” 2nd series, vol. i. pp. 131 and 140.

For our present purpose, the public buildings and temples of Pompeii and Herculaneum require a less detailed account; a slight enumeration of them, however, is necessary to show the extent and importance of the community, whose taste and refinement required such dwellings for their private enjoyment, and also to prove that the buildings, from which many of the designs on the walls of the Pompeian Court have been taken, do not owe their origin to the slight and flimsy taste prevailing among the frequenters of a seaside town in the modern sense of the word, but to the higher refinement and habits of those who, leaving Rome in the heat of a summer sun, sought the ease and indulgence of a life such as Campania alone afforded, and yet could not tolerate the contrast of an inferior art around them. This is proved by a comparison of the Pompeian decorations with those of the same period in the baths of Titus, at Rome. The same style and the same peculiarities of taste are evident, and they perfectly illustrate the remarks of Vitruvius, which will be considered in a future place.

When the French occupied Naples, the walls surrounding the city were entirely cleared; this was in October, 1812, and in the March following the street of tombs. Murat defrayed most of the expenses of excavation, and in a short time the Forum and Basilica, with the adjacent buildings, were laid open. At one time 3000 men were employed in the work of exploration.

The Forum (1816) is the largest and by far the grandest spot in Pompeii. It is surrounded by a Grecian Doric colonnade, the Temple of Jupiter, two triumphal arches, forming the north end, and the Temple of Venus and Basilica on the west. Facing the Temple of Jupiter were large buildings, profusely decorated with statues, called the Curiæ and Ærarium, and the remaining side of the forum was occupied by various buildings, among them the Pantheon and the Chalcidicum of Eumachia; these were excavated between 1817 and 1821. The discovery of the public baths did not take place till 1824. These contributed materially to a better comprehension of many passages in ancient authors, being more perfect examples than the vast ranges for similar purposes still existing at Rome.

Tlie general result of the Pompeian excavations up to the present time may be thus summed up; three forums, nine temples, a basilica, a chalcidicum, three piazze, an amphitheatre, two theatres, a prison, double baths, nearly one hundred houses and shops, several villas, town walls, six gates, and twelve tombs.

The impression likely to be produced on the mind of a spectator from the scene in its present condition, may be gathered from the following passages extracted from my own journal, recording my first visit to Pompeii, September 16th, 1843.

JOURNAL.

“By half-past ten we were at the railway station, just outside the gates of Naples, and immediately started for Pompeii. The line of rail continues along the shore of the bay; nothing can exceed the bustle, confusion, and want of system on this amusing road. There exists neither distinction of classes nor limitation of luggage, so that fruit-stalls and puppet-shows--Polichinello, by the way, is here in his native land--are heaped together in the carriages. The first station we reached was Portici, the next Resina, accompanied by the classic cry of Ercolano--signore, Porta d’Ercolano--then Torre del Greco, where heaps of lava piled one upon the other, attest the awful eruption of the last century. Torre dell’ Annunciata being the nearest station to Pompeii we alighted here, and proceeded along a dusty road, lined with cactus, poplar, stone pine, and the castor-oil tree. Festoons of the richest vines hung from tree to tree, and the black clusters peeped out beneath the broad-spread leaves, already beginning to change into the gold of the approaching Autumn. The fields were teeming with corn, hemp, and cotton. No beggars, the pest of Naples, crowded round our carratella, and the dust which rolled in dense clouds was our only annoyance. We now turned our thoughts to Pompeii. A small guard house of soldiers marked the entrance to these classic precincts, and for some distance further the road was planted with willows, producing a rich and solemn effect, and well preparing us for the street of tombs which soon broke upon our view. The road was lined with tombs for a considerable distance before we approached the city gate, called Porta d’Ercolano, on the Herculaneum side; but previously to examining the tombs, we diverged to the right to explore the villa of Diomed, where we found everything in exact accordance with the description of Sir William Gell and Mr. Malkin’s work, ‘Pompeii,’ by the Society of Entertaining Knowledge.

“The tombs are all small but minutely ornamented, the upper parts still remain, and they appear altogether much more complete than I had expected. The gate of Herculaneum, with its grooves, sentry box, and road-pavements, corresponds exactly with prints and descriptions given by numerous travellers.

“At this point of view, little is really wanting. The eye pursues a long line of ascending road, with tombs and thick trees on each side, broken only by the gate of the city, through the arch of which a long continuation of houses is clearly visible. We entered the city; everything is on a small scale, but the walls at this entrance to the city seem high in proportion; the footway and carriage-road remain undisturbed, and still retain the track of chariot wheels. The motion and noise of inhabitants alone seem wanting--no decay is visible, and the impression produced by the scene was that of a populous city during church time. We wandered on through streets and lanes, prying into buildings both public and private, after the manner of that wonderful prince mentioned in the ‘Arabian Nights Entertainments,’ who explored a city, the inhabitants of which had been turned into stone.

“In the shops, many of the walls remain perfect, roofs alone have disappeared, but counters, doorways, and depositaries are just such as we see daily at Naples, and scarcely inferior in point of freshness.

“The mosaic strewn floors are wonderfully perfect--a little patching and inequality of level caused by the previous earthquake are here and there perceptible; the chief difficulty at first is to know the floor from the pavement, that is, to distinguish the inside of a house from the courtyard. All external walls were plastered and coloured, so that a mistake might easily arise.

“The Houses of the Quæstor, Sallust, and the Faun, are exquisite specimens of proportion and arrangement in domestic building. The beautifully painted walls, columns, and inlaid marble or mosaic floor, combine with the deep blue sky, forming so glorious a whole that the rooflessness is forgotten, and the eye reposes with delight on the assembled harmonies.

“The whole city is encompassed by enormous mounds of debris, under which it was formerly buried. These lumps are now caked together, and in their sloping sides trees have already sprung up, so that all appearance of _rubbish_ is fortunately concealed.

“I was greatly disappointed with the scale of many objects, especially the Baths. Sir William Gell’s views are very correct, but the living figures introduced are on an utterly false scale. The Telamons, a series of terra-cotta figures, tinted red, with yellow hair and drapery, supporting the frieze, seem, in his pictures, the size of life, whereas they are only two feet high, one-third in fact of the size they are made to appear in his drawings.

“Modern roofs are extended over all parts retaining ornament, stucco, or paintings; some of the finest mosaics are carefully boarded over--the famous lion, for instance--whilst others are protected by coarse glass frames with slides such as we use for cucumber-beds in kitchen gardens. A beautiful marble pavement attracted our attention, in the house of Actæon or Sallust, but the great mosaic of Darius is not visible, being plastered over preparatory to its removal to Naples. The borders alone remain uncovered. The Forum, with its Basilica, temples of Jupiter, Vesta, and Venus, are only realisations of my previous conception, allowing, as before, for the reduction of size. The best mosaics, paintings, statues and bronzes have been removed to Naples, but their place is frequently supplied by copies, which serve equally well to illustrate their effect.

“The tragic theatre is complete in form; the stone seats, however, have nearly all disappeared. The amphitheatre is considerably distant from the rest of the excavations; it is remarkably perfect, and the view of Vesuvius from the summit of this building is surprisingly grand. It contrasts strangely with the beautiful limestone range of mountains on the other side of the bay. Vesuvius appears more rugged and frowning in this aspect--beheld from the remains of its victim--than from the more-frequently painted scene, the Chiaja of Naples. The deep blue and gray-brown of the volcano is studded with white dots, each of which is a villa or hermitage, creeping up to the mouth of the crater, regardless of the warnings of the buried cities, and the devastation at its roots in Torre del Greco, and in Nola of the plain beyond. They seem like flies settled on the head of a sleeping monster, or, to speak in better phrase, like white sails on the calm and azure sea, which, at the moment I am writing, seems incapable of harbouring the terrors and destruction which mankind so frequently experience, and which two days ago we saw in all their sublimity.

“In the baths of Pompeii a slight refreshment was offered us, and at a little farm-house in the neighbourhood of the amphitheatre, we enjoyed a more substantial meal. The comic theatre is small, but much more perfect than the one previously visited. In all the public buildings a commencement of restoration after the earthquake was clearly visible, especially in the forum.

“Vegetation takes root, at every opportunity, between cracks of stones, or wherever mould is collected; grass there is none. The wild fig and the luxuriant fern are the most frequent intruders, but they do not spread sufficiently to afford shelter, and the walls themselves are not high enough to serve as protection against the scorching sun. As the sun neared the horizon, we were warned to depart, and, mounting our car in preference to the railway, we rattled off along the high road, well pleased with a journey that, after defraying all expenses, did not exceed the cost of 3_s._ 4_d._ So ended my first day at Pompeii, 1843.

“I could not help contrasting all this with our first visit to Herculaneum, which is entirely underground, imbedded in hard tufa, and exposed only in small portions protruding here and there, where we threaded long caverns and galleries cut in the wet, cold, and dripping material, the bad vapours of which are very dangerous. I would compare Herculaneum to a geological fossil half worked out of the compact material which surrounds it. There is an important difference in the overwhelming of the two cities. Pompeii was covered solely with fine dust and powdered scoria, all _dry_ but rendered compact by the great pressure of the fallen mass. Herculaneum was filled up by a dense rolling liquid, or rather paste of fine powder mixed with boiling _water_ strongly impregnated with sulphur, and forming what has now become a perfectly hard compact stone, and only to be removed with the axe. In Pompeii all excavations are carried on with the shovel, as the dry powder easily gives way.”

The private houses of Pompeii have been variously named, sometimes from an inscription on the door post, or from the subject of some principal painting, at other times from the supposed occupation or condition of the owner, or from a peculiar object found in the dwelling; and not unfrequently the presence of some distinguished person at the time of excavation has conferred a lasting title on some particular remains. The application of these names will be seen in the houses of Pansa, of Meleager, the Quæstor, the Surgeon, the Fountain, and that of Queen Caroline. Some of the houses have had the names changed, as that of the Tragic Poet is now called the House with Homeric Paintings. All the houses seem to have been buried somewhat higher than the top of the ground floor. Upon this bed of ashes is found a layer of ashes mixed with mould, and remains of buildings to the depth of seven feet. The moisture retained in the vegetable mould had destroyed the surface of the paintings, and not unfrequently the pattern was seen on the mould to which the stucco still adhered. In this manner has the decoration of the upper apartments been destroyed, and the pressure of superincumbent masses has crumbled the woodwork. That the houses had upper ranges of chambers is evident from the remains of staircases leading to them both within and without. The first floors were nobly paved, mosaics having been found at various levels one above the other. Ceilings also were variously decorated with paintings like the walls, and sometimes composed of stucco. Mr. Falkener (pp. 66 and 67) observed a gorgeously ornamented ceiling to a tablinum. It consisted of a large circle in a square panel boldly moulded, and enriched with stucco ornament, with ultramarine, vermilion, and purple colouring, together with a profusion of gilding. Fragments of equally elaborate ceilings were found in such a position as to lead to the conviction that they belonged to apartments of different stories, one above the other.

The visitor to Pompeii is generally struck with the intensity and crudeness of the colours on the walls. This is easily accounted for in the necessity for the exclusion of light in hot countries; for with light heat comes also, and all who have visited Italy will remember the care with which the modern sitting rooms are darkened during daytime. The strength of these colours would thus be always _toned down_ by shade.[53] With all the variegation of colour in these Pompeian walls, one pervading principle may be observed, viz., that the strongest and darkest colours are confined to the bottom of the room. Thus if the dado, or lower part of the wall, be black, the rest will be red or yellow, and the ceiling white; and if the dado be red, the rest of the wall yellow or blue. If the dado be yellow, all the rest of the room will be white.

[53] See page 65.

The principal divisions of a Roman house consist of three square chambers, leading one into the other; the first and last of these are lighted by a square opening in the middle of the ceiling, but the central apartment is destitute of any means for the entrance of the daylight; in fact, it receives only such light as can be communicated from the rooms on either side; still as there was no actual partition between these chambers, beyond that made by curtains,[54] sufficient light must have obtained entrance, which could be modulated at pleasure. The name of this central room was the _Tablinum_. The first room, which is generally the largest, is called the _Atrium_, and has a square tank or basin in the middle of the floor to collect the water dropping from the roof, and to receive the falling rain, as the apartment is directly open to the sky. The aperture in the roof is not very large, and this arrangement for the free descent of rain affords two essential luxuries to the inhabitant of a southern climate--shade and moisture. In a country like our own it is scarcely possible to estimate their value.

[54] Sir William Gell (vol. i. p. 160 of Pompeiana, Second Series) states that the iron rods on which curtains or draperies were suspended from column to column were discovered perfect in an excavation at Herculaneum in 1828.

The further room had a larger aperture above, and the open space below was laid out with plants like a garden, bordered with columns, so that the narrow covered space left on each side formed a miniature cloister. It was called _Peristyle_, from the Greek words, meaning surrounded by columns. In the map of ancient Rome, made in the time of Septimius Severus, this arrangement in the private houses is distinctly visible. As in our modern houses, the proportions varied both according to the caprice of the owner, or the limitations of space. Some had a greater number of apartments, and others a double set. Not a few added an extensive series of domestic offices, dining-rooms, and bed chambers, some of them up stairs. Many houses had a second and third story of bed-rooms above the common level, but in all well constructed houses, whatever the rank of the owner, these three apartments, _Atrium_, _Tablinum_, and _Peristyle_, remain the _essential_ portions. Here, as much of the life of a leading citizen was public, he received his clients and allowed the slaves to wait upon him. It was only in the inner apartment, such as the œci and triclinia, that he could indulge in privacy.

In the better class of houses, the _Atrium_ was generally surrounded by smaller rooms, called _cubicula_, and the square of the Atrium was broken by the further part being widened on each side =[T]= fashion, into _alæ_, or wings, which correspond to the transepts of our cathedrals. The _tablinum_, again, was narrowed by a partition which took off a side passage, called _fauces_, through which the servants passed from one end of the house to the other without disturbing those occupied in the middle chamber. The floor of this _tablinum_ was frequently ornamented with elegant pictures, in mosaic, as that of the Tragic Poet’s House, by the choragus teaching his actors, and distributing his masks (Gell, vol. i. pl. 45). The famous large mosaic, the Battle of Issus, in the House of the Faun, has already been mentioned. In some houses, but very rarely, there was a passage on both sides of the tablinum; as in the reproduction described in these pages, the House of the Coloured Capitals, and a few others, but the majority have one only.

The reader may derive a clearer and certainly a more poetical idea of an ancient house from the following extracts from Sir Bulwer Lytton’s “Last Days of Pompeii.” The house which he describes is taken from a personal examination and the assistance of his antiquarian friend, Sir William Gell:--

“You enter then usually by a small entrance passage, called vestibulum, into a hall sometimes with--but more frequently without--the ornament of columns; around three sides of this hall are doors communicating with several bedchambers--among which is the porter’s--the best of these being usually appropriated to country visitors. At the extremity of the hall on either side to the right and left, if the house is large, there are two small recesses, rather than chambers, generally devoted to the ladies of the mansion; and in the centre of the tessellated pavement of the hall is invariably a square shallow reservoir for rain water--classically termed impluvium--which was admitted by an aperture in the roof above, the said aperture being covered at will by an awning. Near this impluvium, which had a peculiar sanctity in the eyes of the ancients, were sometimes--but at Pompeii more rarely than at Rome--placed images of the household gods. The hospitable hearth often mentioned by the Roman poets, and consecrated to the Lares, was at Pompeii almost invariably formed by a moveable brazier; while in some corner, often the most ostentatious place, was deposited a huge wooden chest, ornamented and strengthened by bands of bronze or iron, and secured by strong hooks upon a stone pedestal, so firmly as to defy the attempts of any robber to detach it from its position. It is supposed that this chest was the moneybox, or coffer, of the master of the house; though as no money has been found in any of the chests discovered at Pompeii, it is probable that it was sometimes rather designed for ornament than use. In this hall--or atrium, to speak classically--the clients and visitors of inferior rank were usually received. In the houses of the more ‘respectable,’ an atriensis, or slave peculiarly devoted to the service of the hall, was invariably retained, and his rank among his fellow-slaves was high and important. The reservoir in the centre must have been rather a dangerous ornament; but the centre of the hall was like the grass plot of a college, and interdicted to the passers to and fro, who found ample space in the margin. Right opposite the entrance at the other side of the hall, was an apartment (tablinum), in which the pavement was usually adorned with rich mosaics, and the wall covered with elaborate paintings. Here were usually kept the records of the family or those of any public office that had been filled by the owner; on one side of this saloon, if we may so call it, was often a dining-room or triclinium; on the other side, perhaps, what we should now term a cabinet of gems, containing whatever curiosities were deemed most rare and costly; and invariably a small passage for the slaves to cross to the further parts of the house without passing the apartments thus mentioned. These rooms all opened on a square or oblong colonnade, technically termed peristyle. If the house was small its boundary ceased with this colonnade, and in that case its centre, however diminutive, was ordinarily appropriated to the purpose of a garden, and adorned with vases of flowers placed upon pedestals; while under the colonnade, to the right and left, were doors admitting to bedrooms, to a second triclinium, or eating-room--for the ancients generally appropriated two rooms at least to that purpose, one for summer and one for winter, or perhaps one for ordinary, the other for festive occasions--and if the owner affected letters, a cabinet dignified by the name of library--for a very small room was sufficient to contain the few rolls of papyrus which the ancients deemed a notable collection of books.

“At the end of the peristyle was generally the kitchen. Supposing the house was large, it did not end with the peristyle, and the centre thereof was not, in that case, a garden, but might be perhaps adorned with a fountain or basin for fish; and at its end, exactly opposite to the tablinum, was generally another eating room, on either side of which were bed rooms, and perhaps a picture saloon or pinacotheca. These apartments communicated again with a square or oblong space, usually adorned on three sides with a colonnade like the peristyle, and very much resembling the peristyle, only usually longer. This was the proper viridarium or garden, being commonly adorned with a fountain or statues, and a profusion of gay flowers; at its extreme end was the gardener’s-house; on either side beneath the colonnade were sometimes, if the size of the family required it, additional rooms.

“At Pompeii, a second or third story was rarely of importance, being built only above a small part of the house and containing rooms for the slaves; differing in this respect from the more magnificent edifices of Rome, which generally contained the principal eating-room (or cœnaculum) on the second floor. The apartments themselves were ordinarily of small size; for in those delightful climes they received any extraordinary number of visitors in the peristyle (or portico), the hall, or in the garden; and even their banquet rooms, however elaborately adorned and carefully selected in point of aspect, were of diminutive proportions; for the intellectual ancients being fond of society, not of crowds, rarely feasted more than nine at a time, so that large dinner rooms were not so necessary with them as with us. But the suite of rooms seen at once from the entrance, must have had a very imposing effect: you beheld at once the hall richly paved and painted--the tablinum--the graceful peristyle, and if the house extended further, the opposite banquet-room, and the garden which closed the view with some gushing fount or marble statue.

“The reader will now have a tolerable notion of the Pompeian houses, which resembled in some respects the Grecian, but mostly the Roman fashion of domestic architecture. In almost every house there is some difference in detail from the rest, but the principal outline is the same in all. In all, you find the hall, the tablinum, and the peristyle, communicating with each other; in all you find the walls richly painted; and in all the evidence of a people fond of the refining elegances of life. The purity of the taste of the Pompeians in decoration is, however, questionable; they were fond of the gaudiest colours, of fantastic designs; they often painted the lower half of their columns a bright red, leaving the rest uncoloured: and where the garden was small, its wall was frequently tinted to deceive the eye as to its extent, imitating trees, birds, temples, &c., in perspective; a meretricious delusion which the graceful pedantry of Pliny himself adopted with a complacent pride in its ingenuity.”

The novelist then proceeds to describe the house known by the name of the Tragic Poet. (See plan No. 2 on page 38.)

“You enter by a long and narrow vestibule, on the floor of which is the image of a dog in mosaic, with the well-known ‘Cave canem,’ or ‘Beware the dog.’ On either side is a chamber of some size: for the interior part of the house not being large enough to contain the two great divisions of private and public departments, these two rooms were set apart for the reception of visitors who, neither by rank nor familiarity, were entitled to admission in the penetralia of the mansion.

“Advancing up the vestibule, you enter an atrium that, when first discovered, was rich in paintings, which in point of expression would scarcely disgrace a Raphael. You may see them now transplanted to the Neapolitan Museum; they are still the admiration of connoisseurs--they depict the parting of Achilles and Briseis.

“Who does not acknowledge the force, the vigour, the beauty, employed in delineating the forms and faces of Achilles and the immortal slave?

“On one side of the atrium, a small staircase admitted to the apartments for the slaves on the second floor; there also were two or three small bedrooms, the walls of which portrayed the Rape of Europa, the battle of the Amazons, &c.

“You now enter the tablinum, across which, at either end, hung rich draperies of Tyrian purple, half withdrawn. On the walls was depicted a poet reading his verses to his friends; and in the pavement was inserted a small and most exquisite mosaic, typical of the instructions given by the director of the stage to his comedians.

“You passed through the saloon, and entered the peristyle; and here, as I have said before was usually the case with smaller houses of Pompeii, the mansion ended. From each of the seven columns that adorned this court hung festoons of garlands; the centre, supplying the place of a garden, bloomed with the rarest flowers, placed in vases of white marble, that were supported on pedestals. At the left hand of this small garden was a diminutive fane, resembling one of those small chapels placed at the sides of roads in Catholic countries, and dedicated to the Penates; before it stood a bronze tripod; to the left of the colonnade were two small cubicula or bedrooms; to the right was the triclinium, in which the guests were now assembled.

“This room is usually termed by the antiquaries of Naples, ‘The Chamber of Leda;’ and in the beautiful work of Sir William Gell, the reader will find an engraving from that most delicate and graceful painting of Leda presenting her new-born to her husband, from which the room derives its name. This charming apartment opened upon the fragrant garden. Round the table of citrean wood, highly polished and delicately wrought with silver arabesques, were placed the three couches, which were yet more common at Pompeii than the semicircular seat that had grown lately into fashion at Rome; and on these couches of bronze, studded with richer metals, were laid thick quiltings, covered with elaborate broidery, and yielding luxuriously to the pressure.”

The following plans, pp. 38 and 39, are collected into one group to afford a more easy view of the differences in their general construction. They are not drawn to scale, and have no pretensions to detail. The principal apartments only are named upon them, and the following is a list of their chief peculiarities, together with the dates when they were excavated, and the various names by which they have been known. The first numbers correspond with those on the plans.

1. HOUSE OF THE EMPEROR JOSEPH II. (1767-69), was a mansion of great magnificence, of three stories. It was beautifully situated on the side towards the sea. This house had a suite of baths; and in the furnace-room the skeleton of a female was discovered. The regularity of plan is very remarkable; but, unfortunately, the excavations were filled in again, so that nothing now remains to be seen.

2. HOUSE OF THE TRAGIC POET (1824-26) is called in the Museo Borbonico, “_Casa Omerica_,” the Homeric House: the same which Bulwer describes as the house of Glaucus. Remarkable for the beauty and dignified character of its paintings, most of them illustrating Homeric subjects.

A list of a few of the principal paintings and mosaics in this house will suffice to show the taste of its occupant.

_Cave Canem._ Mosaic at entrance.

In atrium, on right wall, next to entrance, _The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis_. On side wall, right hand, _The Parting of Achilles and Briseis_. On same wall, separated only by a door, _The Departure of Chryseis_. Opposite to the parting of Achilles and Briseis was represented _The Fall of Icarus_. In a cubiculum on this side was the small frieze of _Battle of Amazons_ (copied in the Atrium of Pompeian Court, page 47). The tablinum was adorned with a picture of _A Poet reading_, and the mosaic pavement representing _The Choragus and Actors_. In a little chamber to the left of tablinum was a small picture of _Venus fishing_. At the end of ambulatory of peristyle near triclinium was the famous picture of _The Sacrifice of Iphigenia_, painted on the wall adjoining the oven of the Fullonica. _The Deserted Ariadne_ (page 57) adorned a small chamber to the left of the peristyle. The opposite side of the peristyle was occupied by the kitchen, latrina, and triclinium, which latter contained the exquisite picture of _Leda presenting her Infant Progeny to Tyndareus_; hence this apartment is sometimes called the Chamber of Leda. Other pictures in the same room are _Venus_, _Cupid_, and _Adonis_, and an elaborate composition of _Theseus deserting Ariadne_. He is in the act of stepping on board a ship, where sailors are making ready for departure. Ariadne lies asleep on the shore; her head is surrounded with a blue circular glory, which is not uncommon in Pompeian paintings. Many of these pictures are on a comparatively large scale, and only equalled in artistic excellence by those which have been discovered in the houses of the Dioscuri and of Ceres, one of the smallest houses in Pompeii. It has only one _ala_ (plan given in Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 55, and in Gell, vol. i., pl. 35, p. 143).

3. HOUSE OF QUEEN CAROLINE (1813), now called that of Adonis, remarkable for the width of Atrium when viewed from vestibule. The kitchen has windows opening to the street. In an open court is a permanent semicircular couch of stone, the _sigma_ of Martial, and so called from the shape that the Greek letter had at this period acquired. (See notice on the changes in the Greek alphabet, in the Catalogue of Greek Court, p. 22). In the Atrium, plants were painted on the wall, as if sprung up out of the ground. A celebrated caricature painting of the studio of a portrait painter was discovered by Mazois in this house.

4. HOUSE OF THE MELEAGER OR APOLLO (1830-31), called also the House of Isis, or of the Nereids. The house is very extensive, and the various apartments are arranged in a different manner from what is generally seen at Pompeii. The block plan, No. 4, will sufficiently explain the distribution of the various parts. The vestibulum is very long and narrow.

5. HOUSE OF SALLUST (1809). Known also as the House of Actæon. The _venereum_ is the peculiar feature of this house. The skeleton of a young female, with four rings on one of her fingers, was discovered as if just in the act of escaping; five gold bracelets, two ear-rings, and thirty-two pieces of money were lying near her. The skeletons of three other females, probably slaves, were found near her. The doorway of the _Prothyrum_ was very broad, and was closed with a _quadrivalve_ door, folding back like our shutters.

6. Two houses side by side, called from the features of their peristyles, the Greater and the Smaller Fountain (1826). The small fountain itself made of shells, the greater one encrusted with mosaics. In the former house a remarkable painting of a sea-port, supposed to represent Dicæarchia, or Puteoli, was discovered. Two staircases indicate the former existence of upper rooms. Here they found oil, in vases, with olives still swimming in it.

7. HOUSE OF THE COLOURED CAPITALS (1833-34). A very large house near the so-called Pantheon.

It is a magnificent specimen of arrangement and decoration. The long range of colonnade, forming a second peristyle or decorated garden, is peculiar to this habitation. (Plan given in Mus. Bor., vol. x., tav. A & B.)

8. HOUSE OF THE DIOSCURI (1828-29). This beautiful mansion has been known by a great variety of names--_The Quaestor_, _the Centaur_, _Castor and Pollux_. The latter name (Dioscuri also) is derived from the spirited figures of the sons of _Leda_, painted reining in their horses on the side walls of the left-hand vestibulum. A running _Mercury_, with purse in hand, was painted on one of the posts of the same entrance. The exterior of this house is much more carefully decorated than was usual among the Pompeians. Many of the stucco ornaments have been picked out with colour. Highly-decorated wooden chests, lined and bound externally with iron, were found in the atrium, at the entrance of the left-hand ala, which still contained a few gold and silver coins that had escaped the grasp of some one who had returned to the spot after the destruction of the city, and made excavation, evidently directed to that particular spot.

This house is one of the finest for the grandeur and taste displayed in every part of it. The celebrated paintings, _Perseus and Andromeda_, _Medea and her Children_, were found on the piers at the lower angles of the great central Peristyle. The great Exedra, or Triclinium, at its extremity, was closed with folding doors, the sockets of which still remain, and the floor was decorated with the famous circular mosaic of _The Lion crowned with Garlands by young Cupids_. (Engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. vii., tav. 61.) (Plan given in Gell’s Pompeiana, vol. ii., pl. 63.)

9. HOUSE OF THE FEMALE MUSICIAN (1847). Known by the Italian name _Della Sonatrice_, called likewise _House of the Triumphant Bacchus_. It is a very interesting excavation, displaying much magnificence and elegance of decoration. It may be regarded as a double house of three stories. Several of the paintings of the Sydenham Court have been copied from the walls of this mansion. The name of the house is derived from a painting in one of the chambers representing a young actress in a mask playing the double flute. A picture was found near the foot of the stairs displaying writing materials, such as tablets, _stylus_, _atramentum_, or ink-bottle, and a sealed letter, which preserves the direction on it, “To the Decurion Marcus Lucretius.” Hence, the house is not unfrequently called by his name, in the supposition that he must have been the owner. Mr. Falkener was present during the excavation of this house, and has published a very interesting account of his observations in the Museum of Classical Antiquities. The arrangement of the portion beyond the tablinum is very singular, consisting of a fountain and basin surrounded by a variety of small figures arranged in front of it. The house seems, at the period of its destruction, to have been undergoing alteration. Many of the central pictures had been taken out from the walls, preparatory to the insertion of fresh ones. The artists appear to have sometimes painted on wood for that purpose. Many years ago, the workmen came to an apartment at Stabiæ, where the pictures had been separated from a wall preparatory to removal, which the ruin of the city prevented: the paintings therefore were found leaning against the wall of the apartment. (The plan of this house is given in Mus. Bor., vol. xiv., tav. A and B.)

10. PLAN of some private dwellings copied from the celebrated fragments of a map of Rome, engraved on marble about the time of Septimius Severus. (Bellorius Ichnographia, Tab. 7, page 35.)

THE HOUSE OF PANSA. (1811-14.) One of the largest of the superior class of mansions hitherto discovered. It has an extensive garden, and the rooms were distributed with great regularity. This house is more generally referred to in illustration of a Pompeian house, and for that reason has been made the subject of a larger and more elaborate plan than the rest. In one of the bed-rooms, five female skeletons were found, some of them with gold ear-rings. The name of the house is derived from the red letters PANSAM. ÆD. PARATVS. ROG. daubed upon the door-post. (The plan of this house is given large at the end of this book.)

THE HOUSE OF CERES (1827). Called also the House of Zephyrus and Flora, from an interesting painting of the _Marriage of Zephyrus and Flora_; it is also known as the House of the _Ship_ (Naviglio), which latter name is derived from a painting in one of the shops. Another name, also, is of the _Bacchantes_. The beautiful seated divinities, _Bacchus_ and _Ceres_, between the Tablinum and Alæ of this court, were copied from this House of Ceres. A third sitting deity, _Jupiter_, with a round plate behind his head, like the _nimbus_ of saints in old pictures, belonged to this series. It is remarkably dignified. (See Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 52.)

THE HOUSE OF THE FAUN (1829-31). So called from the discovery of the beautiful little Faun introduced in this court, copied in the original material, bronze. This house is celebrated for its great mosaic, representing _Alexander and Darius at the Battle of Issus_. The apartments were very numerous and on a grand scale.

HISTORY OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE.

The original intention in constructing the Pompeian Court in the Crystal Palace was to appropriate it for purposes of refreshment. In furtherance of this plan, more especial attention would have been devoted to the mural decorations and the arrangements for public accommodation and convenience. The nature and extent of the gigantic structure within which this court was to be erected, determined, in a great measure, the breadth of space to be left open. A glance upwards will show the spectator how the supports of the galleries are arranged, and also the necessity that exists for incorporating these within the walls of the smaller erection. The refreshment chambers must necessarily have been much larger in extent than any of the rooms in the houses at Pompeii; the general disposition of their chambers, however well suited they might have been for the purposes of ancient life, were totally inadequate to the requirements of modern visitors; consequently this plan was abandoned, and the present Pompeian Court instituted in its stead.

The original design for this house was made by Mr. Digby Wyatt, at Naples; and, in conjunction with Mr. Owen Jones, his companion in the tour for the collection of works of art for the decoration of the Crystal Palace generally, he entered into arrangements on the spot with Signor Abbate, the official draughtsman to the King for the Pompeian excavations, to come over to England the following spring, with cartoons and tracings, from Pompeii, in order to decorate the building, then to be prepared for him, at Sydenham, with facsimiles of the different paintings at Pompeii selected by Mr. Wyatt for the decoration of the respective rooms. The King of Naples granted permission to Signor Abbate for the visit, and, accordingly, this distinguished artist arrived in England fully prepared to perform his task. Although the plan of devoting the Pompeian Court to refreshment was meanwhile given up, the measurement of the walls that had been given to Signor Abbate for the preparation of his cartoons prevented any general change of design, and the shortness of the period originally fixed for his stay in this country prevented any important alterations being undertaken. The decorative painting of the Pompeian house was entirely under the management of Signor Abbate, Mr. Parris. Jun. acting as his deputy. They had thirty assistants, ten of whom were English. The principal figure painters were Mundici and Gow, and the names of the chief ornamentalists are Leslie, Luetyens, Wassner, Yahn, Munsch, Mœvius, and Meyer. The entire arrangement and building are due to Mr. Digby Wyatt, furthered by the zeal and energy of Mr. Thomas Hayes, his deputy.

It will be seen in the following description of the Court, that each part has been copied from some existing authority; and the few exceptions that do occur, in which originality was necessary, have been carefully noted.

Some of the leading works which contain illustrations of Pompeii, will be found enumerated in the list of books at the end of the description of the Roman Court, and others of more immediate importance have been referred to in the text when requisite.

DESCRIPTION OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE.

The outer walls are supposed to be surrounded by the street, and the entire house forms what the Romans called an _insula_; that is, a detached building. The tiling, more conspicuous from the gallery, has been faithfully copied from an ancient example, from the House of the Female Musician. The roof of a house was found complete in April, 1853, with the upper part of the ridge carefully guarded by cement. The principal entrance faces the nave; it is flanked by two pilasters, the capitals of which are copied from the back entrance of a house excavated in 1834 (Mus. Bor., vol. x., tav. A, B), and from sketches taken on the spot.

The general proportions of the doorway are taken from the house of Pansa (Gell, Pompeiana, series i., pl. 34.); the grating, or lattice-work[55] over the door, is introduced upon the authority of Mr. Donaldson in his work upon doorways. The external windows are devised to throw more light into the chambers, and to afford a more ready means of looking into the inner recesses. This apparent innovation is authorised by the windows of the Tragic Poet’s house which open upon the street, although much higher up, being raised more than six feet above the level of the foot-pavement. They seem to have been closed by sliding shutters and were sometimes glazed. Glass was much used at Pompeii both for drinking vessels and windows; sheets of glass have been found there, and a convex glass for a lamp remained in the wall, dividing two apartments in the public baths near the forum. The front part of the entrance was called _Vestibulum_; the remaining part of the passage, _Prothyrum_, which latter was bounded by a second door which closed in the _Atrium_. The door is quadrivalve, and the panelling is taken from the false door painted on the wall of the Chalcidicum near the statue of Eumachia (Gell, Pompeiana, 2nd series, page 21, plate 9).

[55] Called by Vitruvius _Hypaetrum_. Smith, s. v. Janua. p. 626. Compare a latticed window in vol. i., p. 229 of “Pitture d’Ercolano.”

The inlaid marble on the threshhold, representing a dog, is found at the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet (Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 56). A similar device was painted at the entrance of Trimalchio’s house, described by Petronius, who was alarmed at the first sight of the furious animal at the full stretch of his chain so skilfully represented in the original mosaic (Petronius, Satyricon, ch. 29). The inscription on both is the same, CAVE CANEM, which means “Beware of the dog.”

The _Prothyrum_[56] or _Ostium_, was the passage between the street door (_janua_), and the house door (_ostium_), and corresponds to our entrance hall; a small square room on one side was sometimes devoted to the door-keeper or porter (_janitor_ or _ostiarius_). They were called _Cellæ Ostiariæ_.

[56] Rich, s. v.

The walls and ceilings of these side apartments are white, with a red _dado_, that is, the lower part of the wall, answering to our surbase. The decoration of these rooms is imitated from the House of the Second Fountain. The walls of the _Prothyrum_ itself are red, with a winged Cupid in a panel on each side. They are from the House of the Dioscuri. The _dado_ is black, the ceilings of these three apartments are white and slightly arched.

Most of the ceilings in Pompeii were of this description, and composed of segmental vaults painted in fresco, like the walls beneath, only in lighter colours or more delicate and thinner patterns on a white ground. A small stucco cornice highly enriched with colour follows the lines of the archivolt. In the Villa of Diomed are some flat ceilings, and other examples have been published in the Pitture d’Ercolano.

ATRIUM.

The view of this spacious apartment at the moment of entrance is very imposing; the only difference between this and a real Pompeian house consists in the greater diffusion of light, and the increased scale of the apartment better suited to a palace in the capital of the Empire. For the purpose of fully displaying the beauties of the mural decorations, much more light has been admitted into this apartment than is usually found in the same division of the Pompeian houses. To this end, the central aperture, which ought to have been of the same size as the reservoir below, has been considerably widened. Windows also have been introduced in order to give the spectator a better view of the decorations within the side chambers. At a glance the eye recognises the various parts of the building previously described. In the centre below is the square basin to collect the water, called the _impluvium_, and the corresponding aperture above would be the _compluvium_. At the further end, facing the entrance, a graceful female figure is seen playing the lyre--these paintings will be described hereafter. In many houses this extremity is painted sky blue, with shrubs and trees to imitate a distant garden--this was the case in the peristyle of the Tragic Poet’s House (Gell, vol. i., p. 159), also in the Houses of the Quæstor and Actæon (Gell, pl. 20, page 175). The dark square central part forming as it were a frame to our view of the peristyle, is the _tablinum_, the side-passages are the _fauces_, and the smaller apertures round the sides of the _Atrium_ will be recognised as conducting to the _cubicula_. Each of these apartments we propose to examine minutely, after having taken a general view of the _Atrium_. This important space in a Roman house was called also the _Cavum Ædium_, or _Cavædium_, as Pliny writes it. There were various kinds of _Atria_; the simplest with no support in the centre--as this--called the _Atrium Tuscanicum_. Where the roof was supported by four columns in the centre it was called _Tetrastylum_. If the columns surrounding the _impluvium_ were numerous, it was called _Corinthium_, and when, as rarely has been found, no opening was left in the centre, the apartment was said to be _Testudinatum_. Sometimes a roof was so arranged as to throw off the water outside, and then the term _displuviatum_ was employed.

The _Atrium_, as viewed from the door, is oblong, in a position reversed from that in which it is generally found in Pompeian houses: although an authority for this arrangement exists in the House of Queen Caroline. The _impluvium_ in the centre is of marble, and the exquisite small marble statue of a faun, serving at the same time as a fountain, is copied from the house called after the grand Duke of Tuscany. The floor is an excellent imitation of ancient mosaic work, executed by Messrs. Minton; the various patterns are taken from different Pompeian houses. Many of the floors at Pompeii exhibit some of the finest examples of mosaic work in which elaborate paintings with every variety of colour have been produced. They are composed solely of small pieces of coloured stone or glass fitted closely together and highly polished. It is the most durable of all methods of painting, and is generally set in a strong bed of cement. The modern Romans practise this art with such success, that a mosaic can scarcely be distinguished from a picture carefully painted with the brush. Every altar-piece but one, now in St. Peters’, has been made by this process. The celebrated mosaic of the Doves drinking, described by Pliny, is now in the capitol at Rome, and many descriptions of pictures executed in this mode are to be found in ancient authors. This process must be carefully distinguished from _inlaying_, which the ancients also practised, and may be seen here in the vestibules and some of the side chambers leading out of the peristyle.

The prevailing colour of the atrium is white. All round the doors and the windows of the Cubicula the wall is painted bright blue with red dado. The pilasters are white with the lower part yellow; their capitals white heightened by blue and red; they are from the House of the Centaur. In square compartments, on a white ground, between the capitals of pilasters, are elegant groups of female figures on marine animals, and Cupids in chariots; some of the small enriched mouldings are from the cornice of the tomb of Calventius Quietus, and the atrium frieze _above tablinum_ is copied from a side apartment in the Tragic Poet’s House (Mus. Bor. vol. ii., tav. A). It is composed of white figures of combatants in armour on foot and in chariots; shields and dead bodies lie prostrate. The ground of this frieze is purple, but the ground of the original is described as white, and the figures are said to be clothed in blue, green, and purple draperies. The females are Amazons, distinguished by the pelta or lunated shield (see Statue No. 194 of the Greek Court.) The rest of the frieze is white, with patterns of bright-coloured lines in simple forms. Over each pilaster the frieze is broken by double figures of Victory, yellow and gold, which serve to support the beams which project to the edge of the compluvium. They were modelled by Mr. Monti, under the superintendence of Signor Abbate, from a drawing by Mr. Wyatt.

The compluvium is bordered with red standing tiles called antifixa, and the arrangement of Mazois in his restoration of the House of Diomed has been followed. The antifixa may be seen also on the model of the Parthenon in the bas-relief gallery adjoining the Greek Court. The angle tiles, with a spout to discharge the rain water, merit attention. The sloping roof of the atrium, composed of light beams with panelling between them, has been chiefly restored from existing paintings; but few traces of woodwork remain in any part of these ancient cities without having been seriously disturbed; the atrium ceilings being of wood, were consequently destroyed; pictorial records are therefore our only authorities. Fortunately for us, the ancients seem to have delighted in depicting themselves and their ways of living, so that it is not improbable that the architectural specimens that we see on their walls are only the transcripts of the slender constructions which were in fact confined to the upper stories. This is the more probable as the background of these architectural scenes is generally sky, and where vegetation does appear among them it consists commonly of plants growing in pots, or else the tops of trees as they would appear from the upper part of a house.

CUBICULA.

We must now go into the detail of the house and pass into each room as consecutively numbered in the plan, beginning in this instance on the left hand of the principal entrance, keeping the wall of Atrium always to the left.

1. CUBICULUM. This small chamber has the walls totally black with a white ceiling. It is an exact copy both in size and decoration, of a room in the House of the Bronzes at Pompeii, called _la stanza nera_. Facing the door is a square picture representing a “Sacrifice to Minerva” (engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. xiii., tav. 8). In the centre a round shield--the Argolic buckler--with serpent painted on it, mounted on a square pedestal; above this appears a helmet placed on the top of a square pillar; a winged Cupid seems to be adjusting the shield; in front of the pedestal is a smaller circular altar, and Psyche with butterfly wings, clothed in yellow and pink, stands on the left, as if about to cast incense upon the altar. On the other side a Cupid, with blue wings of the same peculiar curve observable in the Marlborough gem, representing the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, brings a white lamb to the altar for sacrifice. Among the arabesques to the right and left of this picture are graceful vases. Half doors of a light wooden construction may be observed, and a curious method of displaying pictures is shown here; they are represented upon the wall very much sloped forward and with folding shutters to them. (See Malkin’s Pompeii, vol. ii., p. 123.) The arabesques at each end of this cubiculum are especially beautiful. They have been wonderfully copied in Gruner’s specimens of Ornamental Art, the size of the originals. The effect of their rich colours upon a perfectly black ground is remarkable, contributing to increase the apparent size of the room very considerably. Few at first sight would imagine this little apartment to measure only 22 feet 9 inches by 6 feet 9 inches. The window openings to the atrium have been explained at page 44.

2. CUBICULUM. The next chamber, forming one corner of the quadrangle, and lighted by a window in the outer wall, has also a white coved ceiling. The upper part of the walls is white, the dado black, and the remaining interval blue. Three graceful female figures floating in separate panels are Bacchantes; they have no wings. The picture surrounded by blue opposite the door, represents a sitting Endymion; he holds a branch in his right hand, and a staff leaning on his left shoulder; the drapery is pink; at his feet a stag,[57] with horns and blue collar, may be regarded as the emblem of Diana, whose favourite he was. (See Greek Court, No. 33). The background is composed of rocks with a square tower in the centre. The subject of Endymion was a very favourite one among the Pompeians. He was sometimes represented, as here, entranced awaiting the arrival of the goddess, at other times sleeping, and the goddess gazing upon him, with his dog starting in surprise at the visitor. Not unfrequently a Cupid is introduced leading Diana by the hand, holding a whip, as if she had just descended from her chariot of night. Whenever the goddess is present Endymion is always represented asleep. On the wall next the door facing the other picture is a square painting of Venus fishing. She sits on a rock on the right hand side, her yellow hair bound with a myrtle wreath, the lower part of her figure enveloped in green drapery; a fish has attached itself to the line of the rod which she holds in her right hand, and Cupid with blue wings, sitting on a rock across the water, expresses great joy at his mother’s success, which is evinced by his lively action. A piece of red drapery upon which he kneels adds greatly to the harmony of the picture. This subject of Venus angling is also frequently repeated; sometimes Cupid holds the fish basket, and in other cases he angles also. (See cubiculum 15.)

[57] On a closer examination I perceive that the animal is wounded, and the picture therefore represents Cyparissus, who killed a favourite stag by accident, and was transformed into the cypress. The picture is mentioned by Mr. Falkener (page 51).

3. CUBICULUM. The next room in order flanks a side entrance. It is white with a yellow dado. The wall facing the atrium has a square picture of a poet or bookseller, and a comedian. On each side of this picture are painted tall, thin, yellow columns, with yellow shields suspended between them. Medusa and Lion heads are in the centre of these shields, as they were found in the house described by Mr. Falkener (p. 46). The poet, in the picture opposite the door, sits on the left, with his legs crossed. His head is crowned with ivy, and the lower part of his figure wrapt in blue and red drapery. He holds an open scroll in his left hand, and with his right seems to be giving instructions to the player, who stands before him with his mask raised over his head, as may also be seen in the mosaic from the tablinum of the Tragic Poet’s house. (Gell, Pompeiana, pl. 45, vol. i. p. 174). The comedian is dressed in a purple tunic with sleeves, and a full yellow mantle like a pallium thrown over it. In his left hand he holds a _lituus_ or curved stick much used by the players. It resembles the crooked staff borne by the augurs, and so often seen upon gems, Roman coins, and Etruscan paintings. It was generally carried by actors. (Wieseler, Theatergebaüde, &c. Pl. 11, No. 3, Pl. 12, Nos. 23 to 28; and Pitture d’Ercolano, vol. ii. tav. 3. p. 19). The lituus was curved more than the pedum or shepherd’s crook, which is simply a stick with a hook at the end of it.

At the foot of the sitting figure is a round box called _capsa_ or _scrinium_, it has rings and cords on the outside. This box is, in fact, a library, it contains the volumes or rolls such as have been discovered in the villa at Herculaneum (see _ante_, p. 20), one of which the poet may be supposed to have taken out and to be holding in his hand. Many instances of these _scrinia_ occur among the Pompeian paintings, with tickets or titles of the books hanging out at the top. (See also a statue of Sophocles, No. 322, where the _scrinium_ is open and the rolls clearly displayed.)

Above this composition, is a landscape in an oblong frame. It contains a long villa and trees with awnings extended for shade, a yellow isolated column and a separate ædiculum. This is one of the examples of landscape painting prevalent during the time between Nero and Titus. Landscape painting did not at first become a separate branch of art but Ludius appears to have introduced the style. The ancients rarely indulged in the modern taste for representing wild and romantic scenery; all their compositions are made of long lines of building, basilicas, villas, trees pleasantly disposed, bird’s-eye views of sea ports and artificially arranged gardens. Places in fact _to go to_ and not in accordance with the feeling of our own times, which leads us to enjoy a grand scene, a combination of earth and sky without any desire to move from the spot upon which we have been placed. A description of the Vale of Tempe in Ælian has always been referred to as implying that the ancients had _some_ feeling for the picturesque, and surely the back grounds to many of their figures show considerable invention and romantic appreciation, although deficient in the modern arts of aërial perspective and chiaroscuro. Above this landscape, is a female figure, the lower part draped, with an elephant’s trunk on the head, and a lion at her right side. In this manner Africa is personified on coins both of Hadrian and Septimius Severus, (Millin, Gal. Myth., Nos. 371 and 372).[58] The left foot of this figure is placed on an elephant’s head, of which the trunk and tusks only appear (compare Falkener, page 52, note). The yellow dado is ormented with white swans, holding purple ribands. On the left wall, opposite the side vestibule, is a pretty little group of a winged Cupid leading an ibex or chamois, painted on a very dark purple ground.

[58] The skin with trunk and tusks of an elephant’s head may be seen applied in a similar manner upon the coins of the Bactrian Demetrius. Compare also a small double Hermes in the Roman Gallery, No. 385.

4. VESTIBULUM. The side entrance, light and narrow. The ceiling consists of one flat sunk panel, white, with blue and red stars. The lower part of wall red, the dado black. The SALVE inlaid in the pavement is taken from the house of the Vestals.

5. The ALA: here, of necessity, very shallow, but in many Pompeian houses of much greater depth, has a white curved ceiling, with broad blue, red, and green lines on it. The upper part of walls white, a frieze of black below it, yellow panels with white borders, black dado.

The paintings of the Ala have been taken from a house near the Basilica. The great picture is called Cupid Condemned to Labour. The height of the mountain in the background is very remarkable.

The picture is surrounded with red, and flanked with white columns, having bright patterns spirally arranged upon them. On either side of the chief picture are two floating figures upon a yellow ground, surrounded by a chaste white patterned border, that has been published by Zahn. To the left are two Cupids bearing a square pharetra or quiver. To the right a lovely Cupid with crimson drapery, carrying a lyre such as Apollo sometimes plays; he is assisted in the operation by a Psyche with purple butterfly wings, a purple undervest and green over it, wearing pale blue boots. These little figures are copied from a house near the forum. In the spandril is an architectural scroll-work in gay colours, with two lions leaping through it, a peculiarity to be seen in the Temple of Isis, at Pompeii, and in the Theatre of Myra, in Lycia.

6. The wall adjoining the Ala, and forming part of the Atrium, has been very gracefully decorated. It is occupied by a highly finished picture of Bacchus enthroned. The god of wine in the bloom of youth and beauty is crowned with the vine; a fawn’s skin--the nebris--is tied across his chest; in his right hand he holds the cantharus--a two-handled cup sacred to Bacchus--and with the other he grasps the thyrsus. His sandalled feet rest on a square foot-stool, and a leopard sits on the ground to the right of the throne; a drum or tympanum is placed at the opposite side. The main ground of this composition is blue, the architecture of the shrine or canopy around the figure green, yellowish-brown and red. The central group is engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 53. The dado coloured rich deep red. From the House of Ceres.

7. Next to this is the left-hand FAUCES or passage to the interior, and more private parts of the house. The white ceiling is delicately covered and spangled with blue and red stars. The right side of the fauces is white at the top, with alternate divisions below of red and blue having arabesques upon them. The dado black, with green and yellow patterns upon them, published by Zahn.

8. THE TABLINUM.

This broad central space, both as regards its dimensions and decorations, is wholly copied from the Tablinum of the house of Apollo. The entire upper part is white, with delicate lines of blight colours forming elegant patterns upon it. In the centre of the ceiling, which is gently curved, is a naked Venus upon a green hippocamp or sea monster. A flying Cupid holds reins, and another flying Cupid holds a mirror with a long handle. Mus. Bor., vol. viii., tav. 10. Pitture d’Ercalano, vol. ii., p. 247. The ground of the original group, found at Herculaneum, is black. The Museo Borbonico text describes the second Cupid as holding an umbrella, but the form is peculiarly that of a mirror, and Appuleius, Met. 4, in his account of the train attending Venus as she proceeded to the palace of Oceanus, makes especial mention of one holding a mirror. The passage is so illustrative of the ideas of the age that produced these paintings, that some part of it may be transcribed with advantage.

“The daughters of Nereus, too, were present singing in tuneful harmony; Portunus, too, rough with his azure-coloured beard; and Salacia, weighed down with her lapful of fish; with little Palaemon, their charioteer, upon a dolphin, and then troops of Tritons furrowing the main in all directions. One softly sounded his melodious shell; another with a silken canopy protected her from the sun; a third held a mirror, while others, again, swam yoked to her car.”

The spandrils formed by the architrave of the peristyle and atrium are filled with green marine animals on white ground.

9. _Left Wall._--The chief central picture is Perseus showing the head of Medusa to Andromeda, reflected in the water at their feet; as the direct sight of the Gorgon’s visage turned all to stone, the conceit here adopted is very pretty. It was popular in Pompeii, and frequently repeated. When Perseus was about to encounter Medusa, Minerva gave him a polished shield, by the assistance of which he cut off her head without the peril that had attended so many others, being guided through his enterprise by the reflection in the shield. The composition of this picture is very elegant. It is surrounded by bright red. On both sides of the centre are rich architectural ranges of columns in two tiers. The coffered ceilings represented are worthy of observation. Before the columns, at the lower part, are bright blue doorways, in which lie comic masks. To the right and left of these central compartments are large yellow panels, each containing a floating female figure without wings. The one to the left holds a pedum in her right hand and a vintage basket with fruit in the left. The drapery is blue lined with purple. The female to the right, dressed in white and crimson edged with blue, has bare feet and holds a lyre and plectrum; both these females have bracelets. Between the masks, under the principal picture, is a black frieze with admirably-painted greenish marine monsters. The dado of these walls is black. The picture and Bacchantes are copied from the House with the Coloured Capitals.

10. _Right Wall._--The opposite side has exactly the same decorations, with the exception of the central picture and the two side figures. The middle picture represents Venus (Aphroditê), Euploia, borne on the back of a Triton, playing a lyre. She is attended by the Cupids Pothos, Himeros, and Eros. A female figure behind carries a jar, and the heads of Boreas and Zephyros blowing are visible through the dark blue sky. This picture is taken from the house with the coloured capitals. It has been carefully engraved in the Museo Borbonico, vol. xii., tav. 32. See also Panofka Autikenschau, Berlin, 1850.

The floating female to the left of central picture holds the _tympanum_ or drum in the right and _thyrsus_ in the left; her dress is pale purple with white drapery floating behind. This shows well on the yellow panel. Her left breast is covered with a nebris or fawn-skin. The female to the right holds a ewer in her right hand and a patera in her left. A thin gauze drapery is next her skin, having a crimson drapery lined with blue over it. Both these Bacchantes have bracelets and anklets. The four floating Bacchantes of tablinum have been taken from the House with the Coloured Capitals.

11. The second FAUCES is precisely like the other. The broad black line in the pavement edging the floor is characteristic of a Pompeian house. In the one described by Mr. Falkener the black margin, about nine inches broad (page 39), joined the walls. In some instances the colour was red.

12. Wall corresponding in position and decoration to No. 6. The central figure here enthroned is Ceres, the Demeter of the Greeks. The Goddess of Corn, of Earth, and Agriculture, is crowned with corn. A torch in her right hand, bearded corn on her left arm, and a basket of corn also at her feet. The spiked corn is always seen represented in ancient art both in paintings and on coins. It forms a conspicuous symbol on the coins of Metapontum, a city in the same part of Italy as Pompeii. This painting is engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 54. Also by Zahn, taf. 25. The figure of Ceres is dressed in thin gauze undergarment, with pale slate-coloured drapery covering a purple dress, which appears only above the feet. A muslin-like drapery is gathered behind her head and shoulders. The throne, torch, and flame are all of one uniform yellow colour. The basket of corn is in natural colours. From the House of Ceres.

13. ALA. The general decoration of Ala corresponds with the opposite one. The main central picture of this Ala represents the rescue of Andromeda. This painting affords an interesting comparison with the bas-relief in the Greek Court, No. 35, where the same subject is represented. The treatment of the principal figures in the painting is much more sculpturesque than in the bas-relief. In the former the rescued lady stands attitudinizing on a rock, like a statue on a pedestal; her drapery is unruffled, and there is no sign of emotion in the figure prompted either by love, or the recollection of her recent perilous situation. In the latter there is a wild flutter about the drapery of Andromeda. She is descending from the rock with an evident confidence and dependence on her deliverer; and his firm manly pose in the sculpture is characteristic of the hero. The freedom, however, in the lines, is more pictorial in the bas-relief. The group as exhibited in our Pompeian picture, is excellently adapted for modelling in isolated statues. Compare Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 50.

In this picture Perseus has yellow sandals and blue talaria. The action of the hand to conceal the Gorgon’s head is not so successful as in the sculpture; it is offensive to the spectator to see that openly which is supposed to carry so much horror with it. On the ground, at the feet of Andromeda, is a yellow casket, a white fan with red handle, and several white cockle shells, scattered on the ground, which give an appearance of petty detail. Two females are sitting on the rocks to the left, and seem to be gazing upon the vanquished monster rolling at the feet of Andromeda. The sword which Perseus bears is worth notice. It is the _falx_, and has a peculiar hook to it used for pruning. The falx and talaria or heel wings, are characteristic of Perseus. The graceful figures on each side of this central picture are from a house near the forum. To the left, a Cupid, with purple drapery, is supporting a pale-blue vase. Psyche, with purple butterfly wings and blue and green drapery, soars above, and seems helping to lift the vase by the handles. It forms a charming group. To the right of the chief picture are two Cupids carrying a basket with double arched handle. Both these groups are on a yellow ground.

14. VESTIBULUM, exactly the same as the one opposite.

15. CUBICULUM or _cella familiaris_ as next the vestibule. This chamber has white walls with yellow dado. The central picture facing Atrium represents Venus fishing; she holds the rod in the right hand, and, as usual, leans with the other hand on the seat, having the arm quite straight. A similar subject has already been described in cubiculum 2. Here the figures are larger and close together. Instead of Cupid, is a Genius,[59] with broad-spreading green wings. He holds a green branch in his right hand; his drapery purple. Venus is crowned with a diadem, white drapery hangs behind her left arm, and the lower part of her figure is covered by crimson folds with blue lining. The arrangement of sloping shields on each side is the same as in chamber 3. Above the chief painting is a landscape, with buildings, water and a boat. Over this little picture again is a Victory in a _biga_ or chariot, with the horses painted entirely in yellow. The figure of Victory holds the palm branch in her left, and extends the right arm, grasping a wreath. Her wings are wide spread, but very much distorted. When Cupid was banished from Olympus for his impertinence, it is said that his wings were taken from him and transferred to Victory. In early art many of the divinities were winged. Diana on the chest of Cypselus (Pausanias, book v., ch. 19,) and so also is she represented upon the celebrated Clitias vase, at Florence. Many of the large figures of the Assyrian palaces, evidently acting as priests or attendants, are provided with wings, but they are never seen using them. Hebe is represented winged upon the famous cup of Sosias at Berlin, but these all belong to the undeveloped period of art. Among the Athenians Victory was represented unwinged--_Apteros_. After the battle of Marathon, Minerva is fabled to have confined Victory to her favourite spot, the Acropolis, by depriving her of her wings. A celebrated wooden statue of Wingless Victory, _Niké Apteros_, was at Athens, and a copy of it made by Calamis was sent to Olympia by the Mantineans. At Athens was the celebrated little temple of Wingless Victory, some of the sculptures from which are described in No. 57 of Greek Court catalogue. The right hand of the great ivory statue by Phidias, in the Parthenon, held a figure of Victory, Greek Court catalogue, pp. 29 and 30. To return to the painted Victory in this apartment. The highly decorated bar which seems attached to the collars of the horses is very peculiar. The gathering of the mane into a knot on the heads of the horses, and their breast collars are exactly like those on the carved lid of the Chimæra tomb from Xanthus, now in the British Museum. The top knot of the horses may be seen in several antique sculptures from Naples and Florence, Nos. 69 and 71 of Greek Catalogue, and seems to have been originally an eastern custom. The body of the chariot is quite plain. The horses viewed in front are very clumsily foreshortened. This group has been engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. xiv., tav. 45. On the light hand wall is a little compartment of a winged Cupid, with pedum and basket, running from a sitting lion. These paintings are all from the House of the Girl playing the Double-flute, called della Sonatrice, discovered in 1847 (H.B. p. 353).

[59] Called in Mr. Falkener’s book, p. 49, Victory.

16. CUBICULUM, occupying the corresponding angle to No. 2, also lighted with a window, is blue with black dado; copied from the House of the Second Fountain. The chief picture on the wall opposite the door is the deserted Ariadne, a subject many times repeated at Pompeii, and with a great variety of treatment. Ariadne is represented sitting on the shore of Naxos just awaking, and beginning to be aware of her forlorn situation; Cupid, at her side, points to a ship far away, with full-spread sail and many oars, which is bearing off Theseus, her faithless lover. A crimson cord, for necklace, is crossed also over her naked body, a purple drapery covers her lower limbs. The scene is indicated by wild crags, and the horizon is placed remarkably high up in the picture. The wings of Cupid are green, the ship yellow with a white sail. This picture is copied from one in the House of the Tragic Poet; it has been engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 62., and Zahn, vol. i., pl. 33. Gell’s Pompeiana, vol. i., pl. 43, page 169.

On each side is a graceful floating female figure, the one to the left holding a patera in one hand, and a garland in the other; the female on the other side, has a similar action, her drapery is yellow: both figures are remarkably elegant. On the opposite wall, next the door, is a picture of a very playful character; it is a Cupid seller. On the ground is a square strongly constructed cage, such as is used for birds, with an opening at the top, through which an old man is in the act of lifting out a Cupid; other Cupids are within the bars, and show by their gestures the irksomeness of their confinement. The old man dressed in the _exomis_, a garment peculiar to the working classes, lifts the struggling Cupid by one wing; he holds the square trap door in his left hand; a handsome lady who has come as a purchaser stands on the other side and looks up to a Cupid flying above, holding two bright stars; her right hand seems to point to the cage from which the object of her attention may have escaped. Another Cupid has eluded the vigilance of his keeper and hides himself behind the lady’s dress. The scene takes place in a handsome portico with two Ionic columns. This has been engraved in Zahn, 2nd series, taf. 18. Another picture, found at Stabiæ, of a female Love merchant is much more pleasingly and better composed. There the woman holds up the victim by both wings, and offers it like a live chicken to a lady who is seated on the other side. Another Cupid remains within the cage, which is elegantly made and circular. This well-known picture is engraved in the Pitt. Erc., vol. iii., tav. 7., and Mus. Bor., vol. i., tav. 3. To the left of the picture on this wall is a beautiful floating female figure, holding a _tympanum_ or drum in the right hand, with the other raised holding a _thyrsus_. A _nebris_, or fawn-skin, passes over her right shoulder, her drapery is red lined with white, feet bare. The effect of colour upon the blue ground is very charming.

17. CUBICULUM. A black chamber, corresponding to the one we first entered. This room has been copied, both in style and decoration, from the _stanza nera_ of the House of the Bronzes. Opposite the window is a pleasing group of Cupid and Psyche, her drapery is purple and blue, and the wings purple. The picture opposite door represents three Cupids and Psyche surrounding a peacock. In this bird we recognise the favourite of Juno, and the Cupids appear to be feeding it, but the meaning of the subject is very vague. It has been engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. xi., tav. 15. Thus we have completed the circuit of the atrium and its smaller chambers; we propose to pass into the less public parts of the house by the left hand fauces, No. 7.

PERISTYLE.

18. _Ambulatory, Ambulatio_, also called _Porticus_ by the Romans, and _Stoa_ by the Greeks, is a colonnade on four sides, very like the cloisters of our cathedrals. The view looking through the fauces is bounded by a small shrine or chapel, called the _Lararium_. It is a niche raised on a pedestal, flanked by pilasters, and surmounted by a pediment. Within this were kept the Lares, the sacred household gods, that accompanied the inhabitants in their flight. No figures of this sort have ever been found in such places at Pompeii, although many representations of them remain depicted on the walls. They were generally represented as young men in short girt tunics, crowned and holding the drinking horn in one hand. (See Milman’s Horace, p. 168.) Their appearance was first ascertained by an inscription over the sculpture of an altar formerly in the Villa Medici, and now at Florence; a similar altar is in the Vatican, both inscribed LARIBVS AVGVSTIS. (See Galleria di Firenze, pl. 144 of statue, &c.; Mus. Pio. Clem., vol. iv., tav. 45; and Guattani Mon. Ined, vol. ii.; Maggio, 1785). The Lares presided especially over the domestic hearth. The cornice and entablature of Lararium are taken from the funeral Triclinium at Pompeii. The wall behind is a rich Pompeian red, with a yellow ornament, forming a panel on it, beautifully painted.

The roof of the ambulatory is panelled and decorated according to the prevailing style of the lighter coloured ceilings at Pompeii. The devices are formed of very thin lines of the brightest colours upon white. The Ionic capitals of the columns are from the Basilica. The shafts of the columns are not fluted at the lower part, the remaining unfluted surface, together with the mouldings upon the base, are painted bright red. This is a Pompeian peculiarity. Red is a prevailing colour at Pompeii, but in the House of the Surgical Instruments, the lower part of the columns was blue, a dwarf wall between them being painted red. (Gell, Pompeiana, first series, pl. 25, p. 170.)

19. THALAMUS, an apartment next to the fauces, and entered by a door immediately to the left on entering the ambulatory.

It is a strictly private apartment, and the bedchamber of the master of the house. The name is taken from the Greek.

White walls and dark red dado. A charming little Cupid occupies the centre of each of the three panels, which have a peculiar border to them. The upper part of the wall dividing the Thalamus from the fauces has been thrown open for the better admission of light and air. The decorations of this room are copied from the House of the Dioscuri. On the right hand wall are two pictures of great interest and sprightliness. They are taken from the triclinium or exhedra of the house described by Mr. Falkener, and in his work (p. 64) may be seen rough outlines done from memory.[60] In the original apartment these pictures form side panels to still larger compositions. Cupids and Psyches are the only actors in these scenes; and, in the left-hand picture, a Cupid dances holding an _amphora_ or _diota_ on his left arm. A Cupid seated on the left of the picture plays a lyre, and other Cupids are reclining upon couches, beneath an awning. A statue of a bearded Bacchus appears behind, raised on a round pedestal; holding a _thyrsus_ in his left hand. The corresponding picture has a Psyche dancing in similar company, who recline on a couch beneath a broad-spread awning supported by branches of trees. The statue at the back is a Psyche holding a bow in the left hand. A Cupid playing the flute sits on the left; a reclining figure near him holds a _scyphus_ or drinking cup. The dancing Psyche has four butterfly wings and plays the _crotala_ or castanets; her feet are bare, but she wears bracelets. This picture is engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. xv., tav. 18. Falkener, p. 65.

[60] The excessive illiberality of the Neapolitan government can hardly be conceived by those who live in a country where leave to copy and publish is so freely accorded. No one is allowed to draw a monument that has not already been published until after the expiration of three years, at the end of which time the paintings are so often changed by the fading of colours and the obliteration of the details as to render any attempt at copying them hopeless. Falkener, pp. 62 and 65.

The ceiling has a circular aperture, necessary for the admission of light and air, which is authorised by the example in the _caldarium_ of the baths at Pompeii (Gell, Pompeiana, vol. i. pl. 31. Zahn, vol. ii. pl. 94.) The doorway breaking irregularly through the panel is not in accordance with modern notions of order and symmetry.

20. ŒCUS, so called from the Greek word signifying a house, was sometimes a very spacious chamber to accommodate guests at a more extensive banquet than could be held in the triclinium. Here it is broad but not deep. The upper part of the walls white, the dado black, and the intervening spaces red and black surmounted by a rich architecturally-painted entablature. It consists of architrave, frieze, and cornice. The architrave, or lower portion, green with white garlands; the frieze above this is purple having red panels bordered with yellow, and producing a capital effect; and yellow figures of Sirens, or winged female monsters, which uphold a bold projecting cornice. The perspective delineation of this cornice, with its supports, is very remarkable, especially that of the central projection; a similar boldness of perspective drawing may be seen in Pitt. Erc., vol. iii., p. 109, where the fullest knowledge is evinced of the distribution of light and shade.

The black and red divisions of these walls have large broad devices in green and red upon them. The central picture is a collection of silver vessels lined with gold, the variety of forms are well worthy of attention. The pavement of this apartment is inlaid from patterns well known at Pompeii. Zahn, vol. ii., pl. 87.

21. BATH, _Balneum_ or _Balineum_, a small chamber appropriately fitted up. Light patterns on wall above, and middle spaces green, red, and blue in broad masses.

22. A small simply-decorated room, white with red dado.

23. _The end wall of the peristyle._ Its paintings are conspicuously seen from the principal entrance of the house. The general colour is white. Dado red and yellow. The three central compartments are copied from the House of the Augustals, or banqueting house commonly known by the name of the _Pantheon_. Beneath, a high canopy, supported by thin and gracefully ornamented columns, stands a lovely female with one foot upon the step of a door. She is in the act of playing the lyre, holding the plectrum with her right hand, and by her song seems to invite strangers to enter the portal. Upon the architrave of this porch is a yellow group of a Winged Victory in a biga driving at full speed, engraved in Zahn, vol. i., pl. 24. The left-hand figure is a priestess with a _prefericulum_, or small pitcher used for sacrifices, in her right hand, and a bunch of corn and poppies in the other. Her hair is bound by a yellow circlet, and the upper garment or mantle is remarkably similar to that in the dress of the celebrated Flora of the Capitol. (See Catalogue of Greek Court, No. 41.) The lower dress is blue and partly covering her yellow shoes. The architecture, seen through the portal of the hall which the priestess seems to be leaving, is admirably painted. The companion picture on the opposite side, is a young man in purple drapery, turned towards the fair lyrist, and seeming to offer a green wreath. The first two of these figures are engraved in the Museo Bor., vol. iii., tavole 5 and 6. The second one also in Malkin’s Pompeii, vol. ii., p. 315.

In the dado, beneath the figures just described, are large square stalls or recesses. In the centre one is an elegant figure of a girl holding a lyre, she seems to be sitting on the sill or edge of the opening. This figure is engraved in the Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 12., and in Raoul Rochette, Choix de Peintures, pl. 4; Zahn, vol. ii., pl. 77. Gell gives it in his second series of Pompeiana, vol. i., pl. 14, but surrounded by different groups to the original, although all are to be found within the same building. The group beyond forms a graceful heading to the view from the atrium looking through the right hand fauces, No. 11. It consists of two figures, a Victory with expanded wings holding an incense-burner in her right hand, and a patera in the left. She is crowned with laurel, the leaves of which stand like rays about the head. Behind and above her appears a goddess with a sceptre and tiara, either Venus or Juno, more probably the former; she is in the act of putting some incense into the burner held by the other figure. The patera with offerings like purple fruit on it, has been converted by Gell and Zahn into a painter’s palette and brushes; in the Mus. Bor. the Victory wears sandals; but in Zahn and Gell more correctly only ankle rings. The play of line in this group is very pleasing. This group is taken from the portico of the same building as the other figures, viz., the House of the Augustals, commonly called the Pantheon. The ground of the original is black, here it is rich red. Engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 19; Gell, vol. i., vignette heading to preface; Zahn, vol. i., pl. 2.

24. CULINA. The apartment forming an angle of the peristyle was the kitchen, which is copied from the House of Sallust, excepting that the stove in this has only one arch instead of two. The painting of an altar, with eggs between two serpents, is of frequent occurrence. Serpents were cherished in ancient dwellings as creatures of good omen, and became domesticated, as quadrupeds are with us. A similar painting of serpents engraved in Pittore Ercolano, vol. iv., p. 65.

25. Side entrance into the street, immediately facing the bath.

26. TRICLINIUM, opposite the Œcus. Large panels, blue, black, and yellow. Black dado, ceiling white, corresponding to that of the œcus opposite. The walls are also decorated in the same manner, with the exception of a frieze of boys carrying large garlands composed of fruits and flowers entwined with a pink and green ribband. The small central picture on a blue ground, represents a dish of fruit--grapes, pomegranates, green fig, dates, apricots, apple, and fircone.

The triclinium was the dining-room of an ancient Roman house. The guests did not sit at table, they reclined on couches arranged round three sides of a space for the table, leaving the rest open for the servants to arrange the dishes and move the trays. The word _triclinium_ is derived from the _three_ couches occupying the apartment which surrounded the _mensa_ or table in the manner just described. Much importance was attached, in ancient times, to the disposal of the guests. The right hand couch was the most honourable; the person reclining upon it, with his left elbow nearest the railing, was the chief person in the assembly. The Romans were accustomed to rest with the left arm upon cushions during their meals, and after dinner to lie upon their backs and take their repose. In some Pompeian houses, the three couches forming the triclinium, were permanently fixed. The accompanying woodcut shows the arrangement of the places for a party of nine, the favourite number for a dinner among the Romans.

The guests, preparatory to reclining on the couches, took off their shoes, and were then provided with napkins, generally fringed, and often richly embroidered. Water was poured over their hands into basins of precious metal, a process repeated many times during an entertainment, and doubtless very necessary, as the fingers were much used in the course of eating. They had knives and spoons, but forks are entirely a modern invention and their mode of eating was very similar to that practised in oriental countries, where the right hand alone is made use of. Women, when admitted to the entertainment, always sat upon the couches. The same custom may be observed on the painted vases and bas-reliefs of the Greeks down to a late time.

The dinner consisted of three courses; first, the _promulsis_, or _gustatio_, chiefly stimulants to the appetite; the second contained an immense variety of dishes; the principal dish was called _cœnæ caput_ or _pompa_. Among them chief delicacies were the pheasant, thrush, liver of a capon steeped in milk, and fig-eaters dressed with pepper. Hortensius the orator first introduced the peacock. The favourite fish were the turbot and mullet: eels, also, stewed with prawns. Pork, boar’s-flesh, and venison, were the most highly esteemed meats. The carving was performed to the sound of music, by an especial servant called the _scissor_, or _carptor_. The third course was the _bellaria_, or dessert, which consisted of uncooked fruits, such as occupy the centre of the wall before us. In addition to the fruits of the dessert great varieties of pastry were introduced, modelled in imitation of other articles of food; showers of perfume and occasional jets d’eau contributed to the luxury of the scene, but these were extravagancies, probably confined to the most wealthy citizens of Rome. The pages of Horace, Juvenal, Petronius, Martial, Athenæus, Suetonius, Aulus Gellius, and Macrobius, afford curious detail of these entertainments, from which we may easily comprehend the enormous sums they are said to have cost. An extraordinary feast is represented, in a painting, at Pompeii, described by Mr. Donaldson. The table is set out with every requisite for a grand dinner. In the centre is a large dish containing four peacocks, their tails forming a magnificent dome. Around are lobsters, one of which holds in his claws a blue egg, a second an oyster, and another a little basket full of grasshoppers. Four dishes of fish decorate the bottom, above which are several partridges, hares, and squirrels, each holding its head between its paws. These are surrounded by something resembling a German sausage, then a row of yolks of eggs, then a row of peaches, small melons and cherries; lastly, a row of different vegetables, and the whole seems to be covered by a green coloured sauce.

_Mulsum_, wine made into a syrup by the addition of honey, was handed round to the guests at the commencement of the feast. Wine was kept in large earthenware jars, called Amphoræ, stopped with a cork or wooden plug, covered with resin, or gypsum. These amphoræ were sometimes made of glass. On the outside, the jars were marked with the names of the consuls in office at the time of the vintage from which the wine was made, to indicate its age. Sometimes little tickets to this effect were suspended from the necks. They generally had two ears, and were stored up in repositories such as were found in the suburban villa (p. 19). It was customary at great feasts according to Petronius (chap. xxxiv.) for the amphoræ to be shown to the guests for them to read the labels before they were opened. Many of these vessels are represented in the paintings of Pompeii, and several originals from Rome and Alexandria are to be seen in the British Museum. Some of the glass cups and bowls filled with water are admirably represented. In one picture a decanter with the glass for drinking turned down over it, is in exact accordance with our modern custom. Elegant glass vases filled with fruit occur also among the paintings of the House of the Augustals, together with small earthen jars, having labels affixed.

In great houses it was not unusual for the guests after dinner to enjoy their wine in another room. After-dinner drinking, _comissatio_, or _convivium_, was equivalent to the _symposium_ of the Greeks.

27. The WINTER TRICLINIUM. A large square room, corresponding to the Thalamus. The walls are white, with deep red dado. Ceiling coved, and with a round aperture similar to the one in Thalamus. On the wall opposite the door are two beautiful floating Bacchantes, one with thyrsus and tympanum, the other dressed in pink and blue, holding a thyrsus in her left hand, and a floating scarf with the other. They are engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 4, and in Zahn. vol. ii., pl. 13. The Bacchante next the door is the same as in cubiculum 16; her dress here is pale blue; she holds the tympanum and thyrsus; a nebris crosses her breast.

On the left hand wall may be seen a most charming group, exquisitely coloured, of a Faun supporting a Bacchante. The faun holds a bunch of grapes in his right hand, and with the other encircles her waist; his drapery is red, and her delicate form is surrounded by a transparent veil, apparently of gauze. The drapery enveloping the lower part of her figure is purple, heightened with white, shoes blue. The effect of the painting of this group is perfectly fascinating, and entirely realises the treatment required for cheerful subjects. The group is engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. xiii., tav. 16, where the background is described as yellow. The paintings in this room are copied from the House of the Female Flute-player and the House of the Bacchantes. The group last described is in the original of unusually large proportions for such subjects, being three-fourths of life size.

Thus, then, we have completed the _gíro_ of the Pompeian house. The ancients, although they have provided the graceful salutation for comers on their threshold in the word SALVE, do not afford the corresponding word VALE to “speed the parting guest.” Their manes, probably gratified by the interest now manifested in these monuments of their habits, requirements, and enjoyments, desire us to linger within these fairy walls, and to indulge in the thoughts of those who would, ages ago, have found nothing strange and nothing amiss here, excepting the appearance of the thronging visitors, whose costume and manners could never have been anticipated. The house, as we see it, is really a house such as the excavations might reveal. We have already shown that every part has its prototype at Pompeii.

The style of decorative painting during the earliest times of the empire merits attention. It is here exhibited on a larger scale and in a much more extensive series than ever before attempted in England; affording, in fact, the sole method by which such decorations can be fully understood. The subjects of the small central wall panels, and a few of the grotesque devices, have been often published, and are familiar to us through the medium both of prints and coloured copies; isolated portions, however, cannot suffice to give an idea of the harmonious effect that may be produced in mural decoration, by masses of even crude colour, when conjoined in proper proportion with others equally crude.[61] The eye at Pompeii is never offended by a want of balance in arrangement; and the system of confining the heaviest colours to the lower part of the room has been already noticed. Even copies of the same picture that come to England, on comparison, exhibit variations which destroy all feeling of confidence in their accuracy. They are for the most part so small as to conceal many important peculiarities of style, and can only serve as souvenirs. Here we see nothing on a reduced scale (except in Thalamus, No. 27), the paintings are not only of the same size as at Pompeii, but even the exactitude of the outlines is guaranteed to us by the fact of their having been _traced_ from the originals.

[61] These colours could not appear equally crude to the ancients on account of the necessary darkness that pervaded their apartments. See _ante_, p. 31.

The scale and finish of the patterns have to a great extent been regulated by the size of the rooms which they adorn; and it will be seen that in the smaller rooms patterns must necessarily be more minute, and the form of the wall itself less regarded than in a larger apartment where they are viewed at a greater distance. The lightness of the architectural representations and their connection has been already mentioned. The painters seem to have delighted in representing every variety of pavilion, colonnade, balcony steps, rooms and corners, in short, all the _ins and outs_ and _ups_ and _downs_ peculiar to buildings erected to form upper floors. They are, in fact, at variance with the ground stories actually remaining at Pompeii, where all columns and piers of brick and stone are comparatively massive, without any traces whatever of intermediate supports of wood or metal, such as are represented in the paintings. The _arabesque_ devices which occupy so much of the wall space of Pompeii are replete with imagination and ingenious variety. There is, notwithstanding the censures of Vitruvius, which are inserted in page 69, such a playfulness and elegance in the combination of objects so unexpectedly brought together, that we tolerate incongruities, and regard the whole as a dreamlike succession of images, passing easily from one to the other, without any consideration of that which has gone before. The children rising out of flowers are charming; and the living lions, rushing through _scroll work_ of the brightest hues, such as no living lions ever saw, are purely ornamental conceits. Again, the reeds for columns, with all the botanical details, of _nodes_ and _internodes_, are extremely graceful; and with their rich colour and firm appearance, notwithstanding an extreme slenderness, they should be very suggestive to our metal workers as means of support. The monsters sometimes perched upon them, in perfect illustration of the words of Vitruvius, excite our surprise, and being frequently ugly in themselves, incline us to agree with the illustrious architect in wishing them away; but at the same time, without such paintings before us, how impossible it would be to comprehend the passages in his book relating to such matters, and depending for their effect upon the eye alone. The beautiful devices of the _stanza nera_, cubiculum No. 1, are sufficient illustrations of the grace with which incongruities may be combined, and how in a very small apartment, where minute decorations are appropriately introduced, each portion is to be read, as it were, by itself, or, if regarded generally, to seem merely a playful arrangement of colours relieving the monotony of the wall.

Landscapes as seen in cubicula 3 and 15 are said to be peculiarly the invention of Ludius, who lived in the early period of the empire. His conceits, as described by Pliny, have something almost Chinese about them, and his chief desire seems to have been to amuse and occupy the spectators. Extensive landscape views were found in the House of the Dioscuri in the four cubicula on the extreme right, seen in plan (No. 8, on page 39). An extensive painting of a sea-port was discovered in the House of the Small Fountain (plan No. 6). Some very quaint coast scenes, with enormous gallies, are engraved as vignettes in Pitture d’Ercolano, vol. iii., pp. 7 and 13. An extensive scene of a crowded mole, adorned with statues and arches, with a distant town and crowded boats on the water, is engraved at page 47 of the same vol. At page 279 of the same, is a curious representation of various figures on a wet, slippery ground, as described by Pliny in the paintings of Ludius. An extensive scene of a port, with shipping, numerous statues raised on columns, houses, gardens, people in boats and angling on the shore, was found at Stabiæ; it is engraved in vol. ii., page 295, of Pitture d’Ercolano. Eight small circular views of land and sea, animated by numerous figures, were also found at Stabiæ. They are engraved in the same volume at pp. 277, 281, 285, and 289, and form very important illustrations of ancient life and scenery. Curious buildings may be seen in vignettes on page 105 of same volume. A remarkable painting of a creek with four large ships filled with armed soldiers, with three rows of oars, is engraved in vol i., page 243. The gallies filled with armed troops are seen also in page 239. A curious latticed window in a landscape in page 229. These landscape views are all admirably engraved, in a faithful imitation of the masses of light and shade, and with careful attention to the smallest detail. In the Museo Borbonico, on the contrary, the style of engraving fails to render any one of the peculiarities of their execution. Many vignette landscapes are characteristically copied in vol. ii. of Gell’s Pompeiana, but they have not the completeness or richness of the Pitture d’Ercolano. Some curious illustrations of the social life of the Pompeians may be found in a series of pictures representing the ancient Forum of that city, thronged with the same variety of people that may be seen in the market places of Naples and other Italian cities, all occupied in similarly varied occupations of buying and selling, talking and idling; they supplied Bulwer with several incidents for his description, and have been engraved in vol. iii., page 213 to 231 of Pitture d’Ercolano.

Notwithstanding the frequent occurrence elsewhere of ancient paintings inscribed with the names of persons they are intended to represent, scarcely any instances have been met with in the cities overwhelmed by Vesuvius. The word DIDV is written in one picture in white characters near the head of a figure. The fragment was found at Stabiæ; it is engraved in vol. iii., page 231, of Pitture d’Ercolano. On the celebrated marble slab, monochrome drawings by Alexander of Athens; the artist has not only inscribed his own name, but those of the five females in his composition. It represents the visit of Niobe and her daughters to Latona. This picture was found at Herculaneum, May 24, 1746. A very beautiful little mosaic was inscribed with the name of Dioscorides, of Samos, as the artist; thus:

ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΙΔΗΣ ΣΑΜΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ.

There is great diversity of opinion amongst antiquarians as to the meaning of some of the most important pictures discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which might have been obviated had the names of the characters been written upon them, as we see upon the ancient Greek vases, and upon the paintings of Polygnotus, and the chest of Cypselus, described by Pausanias, and, to descend to later and very different times, the well-known Bayeux tapestry, illustrating the history of William the Conqueror. In default of inscription, the Pompeian pictures can only be interpreted by their similarity to the descriptions of other ancient paintings left us by Pausanias, Lucian, Ælian, and Philostratus. The following extract from Vitruvius, book vii., chap. 5, affords a most important view of what innovations took place in his time, showing also, that even before the time of Augustus, mural decorations were composed of extensive architectural fancies, as well as harbours, landscapes, and sea-pieces.

EXTRACT FROM VITRUVIUS.