STALE BREAD.
The oven when found was full of bread. Some of the loaves were stamped to indicate that they were of wheat flour, and others to indicate that they were of bran flour. The oven had been carefully sealed, and there were no ashes in it. Eighty-one loaves were found in it, a little stale, to be sure, and very hard and black, but lying in the same order in which they were placed on the 23d of November in the year 79. The loaves weighed about a pound each. They are round, depressed in the centre, raised on the edges, and divided into eight lobes. Imagine an American pie which has been marked with the knife as if for cutting before it is placed in the oven, and you have an almost exact picture of a Pompeian loaf of bread. I did not try to eat it, partly because I prefer my bread fresh, and partly because the loaves are considered too precious to be given or sold to visitors.
Whoever goes to Pompeii thinking to find a perfect city will be very much disappointed.
The ruins of Pompeii, as the old lady said about the ruins of the Coliseum, are very much out of repair. The walls of the buildings are mostly standing, but the roofs and doors, which were constructed of wood, are gone, having rotted away in their long exposure to the moisture. Everything whatever, of wood, planks, or beams, was turned to ashes: all is uncovered, and there are no roofs to be seen.
Almost everywhere you walk under the open sky; everything is open, and if a shower were to come on, you would hardly find shelter. Imagine yourself in a city in process of building with only the first stories completed, and with no floorings for the second.
ART IN POMPEII.
Many of the statues and works of art have been carried to the Museum at Naples, so that in the old city itself, there are, comparatively, few curiosities of a portable character. The sky, the landscape, the sea-shore, the walls and the pavements are antique, and it is only the visitors and their guides that are modern. The streets are not repaired, the sidewalks are not changed, and we walk upon the same stones that were formerly trodden by the feet of the Pompeian merchant and his slave.
As we enter these narrow streets we can almost think we are quitting the century we live in, and going back to the century that witnessed the birth of Christ.
When first uncovered, the paintings of the walls were as fresh as though they were made but a week ago, the ashes having preserved them perfectly. In a few weeks or months their coloring fades, and they become dingy and hardly visible.
The Pompeians were great lovers of art; every wall is frescoed, and the mosaics on the floors are an interesting study. Statues adorn the interior of the dwellings, and abound in the public places: even the ordinary utensils of the kitchen were fashioned in a remarkable manner, and far more artistic than those of the present day. The most ordinary utensils of the household are specimens of art that evoke the admiration of every beholder.