The afternoon on which we visited Herculaneum was in melancholy
contrast to the day we spent in Pompeii. The lingering summer had at
last saddened into something like autumnal gloom, and that blue, blue
sky of Naples was overcast. So, this second draught of the spirit
of the past had not only something of the insipidity of custom, but
brought rather a depression than a lightness to our hearts. There was
so little of Herculaneum: only a few hundred yards square are exhumed,
and we counted the houses easily on the fingers of one hand, leaving
the thumb to stand for the few rods of street that, with its flagging
of lava and narrow border of foot-walks, lay between; and though the
custodian, apparently moved at our dejection, said that the excavation
was to be resumed the very next week, the assurance did little to
restore our cheerfulness. Indeed, I fancy that these old cities must
needs be seen in the sunshine by those who would feel what gay lives
they once led; by dimmer light they are very sullen spectres, and
their doom still seems to brood upon them. I know that even Pompeii
could not have been joyous that sunless afternoon, for what there was
to see of mournful Herculaneum was as brilliant with colors as any
thing in the former city. Nay, I believe that the tints of the frescos
and painted columns were even brighter, and that the walls of the
houses were far less ruinous than those of Pompeii. But no house was
wholly freed from lava, and the little street ran at the rear of the
buildings which were supposed to front on some grander avenue not yet
exhumed. It led down, as the custodian pretended, to a wharf, and he
showed an iron ring in the wall of the House of Argo, standing at the
end of the street, to which, he said, his former fellow-citizens used
to fasten their boats, though it was all dry enough there now.
There is evidence in Herculaneum of much more ambitious domestic
architecture than seems to have been known in Pompeii. The ground-plan
of the houses in the two cities is alike; but in the former there was
often a second story, as was proven by the charred ends of beams still
protruding from the walls, while in the latter there is only one house
which is thought to have aspired to a second floor. The House of Argo
is also much larger than any in Pompeii, and its appointments were
more magnificent. Indeed, we imagined that in this more purely
Greek town we felt an atmosphere of better taste in every thing than
prevailed in the fashionable Roman watering-place, though this, too,
was a summer resort of the "best society" of the empire. The mosaic
pavements were exquisite, and the little bed-chambers dainty and
delicious in their decorations. The lavish delight in color found
expression in the vividest hues upon the walls, and not only were the
columns of the garden painted, but the foliage of the capitals was
variously tinted. The garden of the House of Argo was vaster than any
of the classic world which we had yet seen, and was superb with a
long colonnade of unbroken columns. Between these and the walls of
the houses was a pretty pathway of mosaic, and in the midst once stood
marble tables, under which the workmen exhuming the city found certain
crouching skeletons. At one end was the dining-room, of course, and
painted on the wall was a lady with a parasol.
I thought all Herculaneum sad enough, but the profusion of flowers
growing wild in this garden gave it a yet more tender and pathetic
charm. Here--where so long ago the flowers had bloomed, and perished
in the terrible blossoming of the mountain that sent up its fires
in the awful similitude of Nature's harmless and lovely forms, and
showered its destroying petals all abroad--was it not tragic to find
again the soft tints, the graceful shapes, the sweet perfumes of the
earth's immortal life? Of them that planted and tended and plucked and
bore in their bosoms and twined in their hair these fragile children
of the summer, what witness in the world? Only the crouching skeletons
under the tables. Alas and alas!