stand.

nor right to go against conscience. Here I take my I can do no otherwise. So help me God. Amen."-Tulloch's "Leaders of the Reformation."

LESSON LXXXI.-POMPEII.

The ruins of Pompeii are now open to the day. A great many of the streets, with all the houses bordering them, have been cleared, and the sand and gravel under which they were buried have been carted away. Immense heaps of this rubbish are lying outside the entrance, covered with grass and small trees, and looking like great railway embankments. Indeed, the appearance which Pompeii now presents, is that of a large open village of ruined and roofless one-storied houses. Many of the houses were originally two stories high, it is true; but the upper stories have been destroyed or shaken down, and in general it is the lower story only that now remains.

The structure of the houses, in respect to plan and general arrangement, is very different from that of the dwellings built in our towns at the present day. The chief reasons for the difference arise from the absence of windows and chimneys in the houses of the ancients, and of course the leaving out of windows and chimneys in a house makes it necessary to change everything.

The inhabitants of Pompeii had no chimneys, because the climate there is so mild that they seldom needed a fire; and when they did need one, it was easier to make a small one in an open vessel, and let it stand in the middle of the room, or wherever it was required, than to make a chimney and fire-place. The open pan in which the fires were made in those days stood on legs, and could be moved about anywhere. The fire was made of

small twigs cut from the trees. The people would let the pan stand in the open air till the twigs were burnt to charcoal, and then they would carry the pan, with the embers still glowing, into the room which they wished to warm.

The same contrivance is used at the present day in Naples, and in all the towns of that region. In going along the streets in a cool evening or morning, you will often see one of these little brass pans before a door, with a little fire blazing in it, and children or other persons before it warming their hands. Afterwards, if you watch, you will see that the people take it into the house.

The ancient inhabitants of Pompeii depended entirely on arrangements like these for warming their rooms; there is not a chimney to be found in the whole town.

In respect to windows, the reason why they did not have them was because they had no glass to put into them. They could not make glass in those days well or easily enough to use it for windows. Of course they had openings in their houses to admit the air and light, and these openings might perhaps be called windows. But in order to prevent the wind and rain from coming in, it was necessary to have them placed in sheltered situations, as, for example, under porticos and piazzas. The custom, therefore, arose of having a great many porticos in the houses, with rooms opening from them; and in order that they might not be too much exposed, they were generally made with the open side inwards, towards the centre of the house, where a small square place was left without a roof over it to admit the light and air.

Of course the rain would come through this open

space, and the floor of it was generally formed into a square marble basin to receive the water. This was called the impluvium. Sometimes there was a fountain in the centre of the impluvium, and all around it were the porticos, within and under which were the doors opening into the different rooms. The bedrooms were extremely small; the walls of some of them were beautifully painted, but the rooms themselves were often not much bigger than a state-room in a steamship. The bedstead was a sort of berth, formed upon a marble shelf built across from wall to wall.

In some of the houses there were more rooms than could be arranged around one court, and in such cases there were two and sometimes three courts. In one case, the third court was a garden, with a beautiful portico, formed of ornamental columns all round it, beneath which the ladies of the house in rainy weather could walk at their ease, and see the flowers growing in the garden, as well as if the weather were fair.

Under this portico all round was a subterranean chamber, which seemed to be used as a sort of cellar; and yet it was very neatly finished, and the walls of it were ornamented in such a way as to lead people to suppose that it might have been used as a cool walk in warm weather. This passage-way was first discovered by means of the steps leading down to it. It was almost full of earth, composed of volcanic sand and ashes, which had flowed into it in the form of mud.

On one side of this subterranean passage-way, near the entrance, a number of skeletons were found. The skeletons were in a standing position against the wall, where the persons had been stopped and buried up by the mud as it flowed in. The marks left by the bodies

against the wall remain to this day. One of the skeletons was that of a female, with a great many rings on the fingers of the hands, and bracelets, necklaces, and other ornaments on the other bones. From this circumstance it is supposed that she was the wife of the owner of the house, and that, in trying to save herself and her jewellery upon her, she had fled with the servants to this cellar, and there had been overwhelmed.

There were very few skeletons found in the houses of Pompeii, from which it is supposed that the inhabitants generally had time to escape. There was, however, one remarkable case. It was that of a sentinel in his sentrybox at the gate of the city. He would not leave his post, as it would seem, and so perished at the station where he had been placed. His head, with the helmet still upon it, was carried to the museum at Naples, where it is now seen by all the world, and every one who sees it utters some expression of praise for the courage and fidelity which the poor fellow displayed in fulfilling his trust. The streets of the town were narrow, but they were paved substantially with large and solid stones, flat at the top. Along these streets were a great many very curious shops-barber's, painter's, wine shops, and the like. The wine shops were furnished with deep jars set in a sort of stone counter.

After passing through a number of streets, a great public square is reached called the Forum. This square is surrounded with the ruins of temples and other public edifices. The columns and porticos which bordered the square are all more or less in ruins; but there are still so many of them standing as to show exactly what the forms of the buildings must have been when they were complete.

In another part of the town are the remains of two theatres, and outside the walls an immense amphitheatre, where were exhibited the combats of wild beasts and those of the gladiators. There are a great many ruins of amphitheatres like this scattered over Italy. They are of an oval form, and the seats extend all round. The combats took place in a level spot in the centre, called the arena.

One of the most curious shops is that of a baker, with the oven entire, and three hand-mills where the baker used to grind his corn. There were many curious utensils and implements found in this shop, which have been removed, with a great number of other interesting and valuable articles, to a museum at Naples.-Jacob Abbott.

LESSON LXXXII.—THE TRAVELLER'S TREE.

This tree, Urania speciosa, is one of the most remarkable that has been discovered in Madagascar. And the extent to which it prevails may be inferred from the native name Ravinala-literally, leaf of the forest-as if it was the leaf by which the forest was characterized, which is the fact where it abounds, though in many parts it is not met with at all. The tree rises from the ground with a thick succulent stem, like that of the plantain, and sends out from the centre of the stem, long broad leaves, like those of the plantain, only less fragile, and rising, not round the stalk, but in two lines on opposite sides; so that as the leaves increase, and the lower ones droop at the end, or extend horizontally, the tree presents the appearance of a large open fan. When the stem rises ten or twelve feet high, the lower part of the outer covering becomes hard and dry, like the bark of the