museum at Naples, and I can show you now nothing but the places where
once stood the Faun, the statue of Narcissus, the mosaic of Arbelles and
the famous blue vase. Such is the Pompeii that awaits the traveller who
comes thither expecting to find another Paris, or, at least, ruins
arranged in the Parisian style, like the tower of St. Jacques, for
instance.

[Illustration: Clearing out a Narrow Street in Pompeii.]

You will say, perhaps, good reader, that I disenchant you; on the
contrary, I prevent your disenchantment. Do not prepare the way for your
own disappointment by unreasonable expectations or by ill-founded
notions; this is all that I ask of your judgment. Do not come hither to
look for the relics of Roman grandeur. Other impressions await you at
Pompeii. What you are about to see is an entire city, or at all events
the third of an ancient city, remote, detached from every modern town,
and forming in itself something isolated and complete which you will
find nowhere else. Here is no Capitol rebuilt; no Pantheon consecrated
now to the God of Christianity; no Acropolis surmounting a Danish or
Bavarian city; no Maison Carrée (as at Nismes) transformed to a gallery
of paintings and forming one of the adornments of a modern Boulevard.
At Pompeii everything is antique and eighteen centuries old; first the
sky, then the landscape, the seashore, and then the work of man,
devastated undoubtedly, but not transformed, by time. The streets are
not repaired; the high sidewalks that border them have not been lowered
for the pedestrians of our time, and we promenade upon the same stones
that were formerly trodden by the feet of Sericus the merchant and
Epaphras the slave. As we enter these narrow streets we quit, perforce,
the year in which we are living and the quarter that we inhabit. Behold
us in a moment transported to another age and into another world.