copied from those found amid the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. These
Roman cities were, in the first century, buried beneath the lava of an
eruption of Vesuvius, and continued to be lost to the world till the
beginning of the last century, when a peasant, in digging for a well,
gradually discovered a small temple with some statues. Little notice,
however, was taken of this circumstance till 1736, when the king of
Naples, desiring to erect a palace at Portici, caused extensive
excavations to be made, when the city of Herculaneum was slowly unfolded
to view. Pompeii was discovered about 1750, and being easier cleared
from the lava in which it had so long been entombed, disclosed itself as
it existed immediately before the catastrophe which overwhelmed it,
nearly two thousand years ago. It presented, to the modern world, the
perfect picture of the form and structure of an ancient Roman city. The
interior of its habitations, shops, baths, theatres, and temples, were
all disclosed, with many of the implements used by the workmen in their
various trades, and the materials on which they were employed, when the
doomed city was covered with the lavian stream.