yard of a convent, which is sometimes paved in mosaic, and generally surrounded by columns; in the middle of this court is a fountain or basin:  the court has no roof and the wings of the house form a quadrangle environing it.  The windows and doors of the rooms are made in the interior sides of the quadrangle looking into the court yard; on the exterior there appears to be only a small latticed window near the top of the room to admit light.  I have seen in Egypt and in India similarly built houses, and it is the general style of building in Andalusia and Barbary.  In the rooms are niches in the walls for lamps, precisely in the style of the Moorish buildings in India.

In many of the chambers of the houses at Pompeii are paintings al fresco and arabesques on the walls which on being washed with water appear perfectly fresh.  The subjects of these paintings are generally from the mythology.  In some of the rooms are paintings al fresco of fish, flesh, fowl and fruit; in others Venus and the Graces at their toilette, from which we may infer that the former were dining rooms and the latter boudoirs.  A large villa (so I deem it as it stands without the gates) has a number of rooms, two stories entire and three court yards with fountains, many beautiful fresco paintings on the walls of the chambers.  Annexed to this villa is a garden arranged in terraces and a fish pond.  A covered gallery supported by pillars on one of the sides of the garden served probably as a promenade in wet weather.  In the cellars of this villa are a number of amphorae with narrow necks.  Had the ancients used corks instead of oil to stop their amphorae, wine eighteen hundred years old might have been found here.  It is not the custom even of the modern Italians to use corks for the wine they keep for their own use:  a spoonful of oil is poured on the top of the wine in the flask and when they mean to drink it they extract the oil by means of a lump of cotton fastened to a stick or long pin which enters the neck of the flask and absorbs and extracts the oil.

Among the buildings discovered in Pompeii is a large Temple of Isis; here you behold the altar and the pillar to which the beasts of sacrifice were fastened.  In this temple at the time of the first excavation were found all the instruments of sacrifice and other things appertaining to the worship of that Goddess.  These and other valuables such as statues, coins, utensils of all sorts were removed to Portici, where they are now to be seen in the Museum of that place.  The Praetorium at Pompeii is the next remarkable thing; it is a vast enclosure:  a great number of columns are standing upright here and the most of them entire; the steps forming the ascent to the elevated seat where the Praetor usually sat, remain entire.  There is a large building and court yard near one of the gates of the city supposed to have been a barrack for soldiers; three skeletons were found