There were dwellings, and
taverns and drinking-houses and eating-houses, and there were those
houses where the feet of them that abide therein and of those that
frequent them alike take hold on hell. In these the guide stays the men
of his party to prove the character of the places to them from the
frescos and statues; but it may be questioned if the visitors so
indulged had not better taken the guide's word for the fact. There can
be no doubt that at the heart of paganism the same plague festered which
poisons Christian life, and which, while the social conditions remain
the same from age to age, will poison life forever.
The pictures on the walls of the newly excavated houses are not
strikingly better than those I had not forgotten; but of late it has
been the purpose to leave as many of the ornaments and utensils in
position as possible. The best are, as they ought to be, gathered into
the National Museum at Naples, but those which remain impart a more
living sense of the past than such wisely ordered accumulations; for it
is the Pompeian paradox that in the image of death it can best recall
life. It is a grave which has been laid bare, and it were best to leave
its ghastly memories unhindered by other companionship. One feels that
one ought to be there alone in order to see it aright. One should not
perhaps
"Go visit it by the pale moonlight,"
but if one could have it all to one's self by day, such a gray day as we
had for it, there is no telling what might happen. One thing only would
certainly happen: one would get lost. It never was a town of large area;
and, like all spaces that have been ruined over, it looked smaller than
it would have looked if all its walls were standing with all their roofs
upon them. Still, it was a mesh of streets, out of which you would in
vain have sought your way if you had been caught in it alone; though it
is mostly so level that if you had mounted a truncated column almost
anywhere you could have looked over the labyrinth to its verge.
It was not much crowded by visitors; though there were strings of them
at the heels of the respective guides, with, I thought, a prevalence of
the Germans, who are now overrunning Italy; I am sorry to say they are
not able to keep it cheap, at least for other nationalities. Among these
I noted two little smiling, shining, twinkling Japs, who carried kodaks
for the capture of that classical antiquity which could never really
belong to them.
