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Destroyed and the Destroyer making this quiet picture
in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at every turn, the
little familiar tokens of human habitation and every-day
pursuits; the chafing of the bucket-rope in the stone rim
of the exhausted well; the track of carriage-wheels in the
pavement of the street; the marks of drinking-vessels on
the stone counter of the wineshop; the Amphorae in pri-
vate cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and
undisturbed to this hour - all rendering the solitude and
deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times
more solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept
the city from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea.

After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded
the eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in
stone, new ornaments for temples and other buildings that
had suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as
if they would return to-morrow.

In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skel-
etons were found huddled together, close to the door,
the impression of their bodies on the ashes, hardened
with the ashes, and became stamped and fixed there,
after they had shrunk, inside, to scanty bones. So, in
the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on
the stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic
features in it as it hardened into stone; and now, it turns
upon the stranger the fantastic look it turned upon the
audiences in that same Theatre, two thousand years ago.

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