Here are
subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, bottles, glasses,
and the like; familiar classical stories, or mythological fables,
always forcibly and plainly told; conceits of cupids, quarrelling,
sporting, working at trades; theatrical rehearsals; poets reading
their productions to their friends; inscriptions chalked upon the
walls; political squibs, advertisements, rough drawings by
schoolboys; everything to people and restore the ancient cities, in
the fancy of their wondering visitor. Furniture, too, you see, of
every kind--lamps, tables, couches; vessels for eating, drinking,
and cooking; workmen's tools, surgical instruments, tickets for the
theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of keys found
clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of guards and warriors;
little household bells, yet musical with their old domestic tones.
The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the interest
of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. The
looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring grounds
overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees; and remembering
that house upon house, temple on temple, building after building,
and street after street, are still lying underneath the roots of
all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be turned up to the light of
day; is something so wonderful, so full of mystery, so captivating
to the imagination, that one would think it would be paramount, and
yield to nothing else.
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