Since you last heard from me we have been to see Pompeii and we are
now waiting for the return of spring weather, to visit, first Pæstum,
and then the islands; after which we shall return to Rome. I was
astonished at the remains of this city. I had no conception of
anything so perfect yet remaining. My idea of the mode of its
destruction was this: first an earthquake came and shattered it, and
unroofed almost all its temples and split its columns; then a rain of
light small pumice-stones fell; then torrents of boiling water mixt
with ashes filled up its crevices.
A wide flat hill from which the city was excavated is now covered with
woods, and you see the tombs and theaters, the temples and houses,
surrounded by uninhabited wilderness. We entered the town from the
sides toward the sea, and first saw two theaters; one more magnificent
than the other, strewn with the ruins of the white marble which formed
their seats and cornices, wrought with deep bold sculpture. In the
front between the stage and the seats is the circular space
occasionally occupied by the chorus. The stage is very narrow but long
and divided from this space by a narrow enclosure parallel to it, I
suppose for the orchestra. On each side are the Consuls' boxes, and
below in the theater of Herculaneum were found two equestrian statues
of excellent workmanship, occupying the same space as the great bronze
lamps did at Drury Lane. The smallest of the theaters is said to have
been comic, tho I should doubt. From both you see, as you sit on the
seats, a prospect of the most wonderful beauty.
You then pass through ancient streets; they are very narrow and the
houses rather small, but are constructed on an admirable plan,
especially for the climate. The rooms are built round a court, or
sometimes two, according to the extent of the house. In the midst is a
fountain sometimes surrounded with a portico, supported on fluted
columns of white stucco; the floor is paved with mosaics sometimes
wrought in imitation of vine leaves, sometimes in quaint figures, and
more or less beautiful according to the rank of the inhabitant. There
were paintings on all, but most of them have been removed to decorate
the royal museums. Little winged figures and small ornaments of
exquisite elegance yet remain. There is an ideal life in the forms of
these paintings of an incomparable loveliness, tho most are evidently
the work of very inferior artists. It seems as if from the atmosphere
of mental beauty that surrounds them, every human being caught a
splendor not his own.
In one house you see how the bedrooms were managed: a small sofa was
built up, where the cushions were placed; two pictures, one
representing Diana and Endymion and the other Venus and Mars, decorate
the chamber; and a little niche which contains the statue of a
domestic god. The floor is composed of a rich mosaic of the rarest
marbles, agate, jasper and porphyry; it looks to the marble fountain
and the snow white columns, whose etablatures strew the floor of the
portico they supported. The houses have only one story, and the
apartments, tho not large, are very lofty. A great advantage results
from this, wholly unknown in our cities.
The public buildings, whose ruins are now forests as it were of white
fluted columns, and which then supported entablatures loaded with
sculpture, were seen on all sides over the roofs of the houses. This
was the excellence of the ancients: their private expenses were
comparatively moderate; the dwelling of one of the chief senators of
Pompeii is elegant indeed, and adorned with the most beautiful
specimens of art, but small. But their public buildings are everywhere
marked by the bold and grand designs of an unsparing magnificence. In
the little town of Pompeii (it contained about twenty thousand
inhabitants) it is wonderful to see the number and grandeur of their
public buildings.
Another advantage, too, is that in the present case the glorious
scenery around is not shut out, and that unlike the inhabitants of the
Cimmerian ravines of modern cities, the ancient Pompeiian could
contemplate the clouds and the lamps of heaven; could see the moon
rise high behind Vesuvius, and the sun set in the sea, tremulous with
an atmosphere of golden vapor, below Inarnine and Misenum.
We next saw the temples. Of the temple of Æsculapius little remains
but an altar of black stone, adorned with a cornice imitating the
scales of a serpent. His statue in terra-cotta was found in the cell.
The temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of
fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many
ceppi for statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as
stone, of the most exquisite proportions; its panels are adorned with
figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of workmanship the most
delicate that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects executed by
a Greek artist, who has humanized all the unnatural extravagance of
the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his
country's genius. They scarcely touch the ground with their feet, and
their wind uplifted robes seem in the place of wings. The temple in
the midst, raised on a high platform and approached by steps, was
decorated with exquisite paintings, some of which we saw in the museum
at Porticai. It is small, of the same materials as the chapel, with a
pavement of mosaic, and fluted Ionic columns of white stucco, so white
that it dazzles you to look at it.
Thence through other porticoes and labyrinths of walls and columns,
some broken, some entire, their entablatures strewed under them. The
temple of Jupiter, of Venus, and another temple, the Tribunal, and the
hall of public justice with the forests of lofty columns, surround the
Forum. Two pedestals or altars of an enormous size (for whether they
were the altars of the temple of Venus before which they stand the
guide could not tell) occupy the lower end of the Forum. At the upper
end, supported on an elevated platform, stands the temple of Jupiter.
Under the colonnade of its portico we sat and pulled out our oranges
and figs and bread (sorry fare, you will say) and started to eat. Here
was a magnificent spectacle. Above and between the multitudinous
shafts of the sunshiny columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple
heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its lips the
dark lofty mountains of Sorrento, of a blue indescribably deep, and
tinged toward their summits with streaks of new fallen snow. Between
was one small green island. To the right was Capreæ, Inarnine,
Prochyta, and Misenum. Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius,
rolling forth volumes of thick white smoke, whose foam-like column was
sometimes darted into the clear dark sky and fell in little streaks
along the wind. Between Vesuvius and the nearer mountains, as through
a chasm, was seen the main line of the loftiest Apenines to the east.
The day was radiated and warm. Every now and then we heard the
subterranean thunder of Vesuvius; its distant and deep peals seem to
shake the very air and light of day, which interpenetrated our frames
with a sudden and tremendous sound. The scene was what the Greeks
beheld (Pompeii, you know, was a Greek city). They lived in harmony
with nature, and the interstices of their incomparable columns were
portals, as it were, to admit the spirit of beauty which animates this
glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii,
what was Athens? What scene was exhibited from the Acropolis, the
Parthenon, and the temples of Hercules, and Theseus and the Winds? The
islands and the Ægean Sea, the mountains of Argolis, and the peaks of
Pindus and Olympus, with the darkness of the Boeotian forests
interspersed?
From the Forum we went to another public place, a triangular portico
half enclosing the ruins of an enormous temple. It is built on the
edge of the hill overlooking the sea. The black point is the temple.
In the apex of the triangle stand an altar and a fountain, and before
the altar once stood the statue of the builder of the portico.
Returning hence and following the consular road, we came to the
eastern gate of the city. The walls are of enormous strength and
inclose a space of three miles. On each side of the wall beyond the
gate are built the tombs. How unlike ours! They seem not so much
hiding-places for that which must decay as voluptuous chambers of
immortal spirits. They are of marble radiantly white; and two
especially beautiful are loaded with exquisite bas-relief. On the
stucco wall that encloses them are little emblematic figures, of a
relief exceedingly low, of dead and dying animals and little winged
genii, and female forms bending in groups in some funereal office. The
higher reliefs represent, one a nautical and the other a Bacchanalian
one. Within the cell stand the crematory urns, sometimes one,
sometimes more. It is said that paintings were found within; which are
now, as has been everything movable in Pompeii, removed and scattered
about in royal museums. These tombs were the most impressive things of
all. The wild woods surround them on either side; and along the broad
stones of the paved road which divides them, you hear the late leaves
of autumn shiver and rustle in the stream of the inconstant wind, as
it were like the steps of ghosts. The radiance and magnificence of
these dwellings of the dead, the white freshness of the scarcely
finished marble, the impassioned or imaginative life of the figures
which adorn them, contrast strangely with the simplicity of the houses
of those who were living when Vesuvius overwhelmed them.
I have forgotten the amphitheater, which is of great magnitude tho
inferior to the Coliseum.
I now understand why the Greeks were such great poets; and above all,
I can account, it seems to me, for the harmony, the unity, the
perfection, the uniform excellence of all their works of art. They
lived in a perpetual commerce with external nature, and nourished
themselves upon the spirits of its forms. Their theaters were all open
to the mountains of the sky. Their columns, the ideal type of a sacred
forest, with its roof of interwoven tracery, admitted the light and
wind. The odor and the freshness of the country penetrated the cities.
Their temples were mostly unparthaic; and the flying clouds, the stars
and the deep sky were seen above. Oh, but for that series of wretched
wars which terminated in the Roman conquest of the world; but for the
Christian religion which put the finishing stroke on the ancient
system; but for those changes that conducted Athens to its ruin--to
what an eminence might not humanity have arrived!