in fashion, and little injured by the lapse of years, and the hot ashes
under which it was buried.[2] There too, you may behold various domestic
and culinary utensils; and there it is quite curious to observe various
jars and bottles of fruits, and pickles, evidently preserved then, the same
as they are by our notable housekeepers now; of course they are blackened
and incinerated, nevertheless, the forms of pears, apples, chestnuts,
cherries, medlars, &c. &c. are still distinguishable. Very little furniture
has been found in Pompeii; probably, because it was only occasionally
resorted to as a place of residence, like our own summer haunts of the
drinkers of sea and mineral waters; or, the inhabitants might have had
warning of the coming misfortune, and conveyed most of their effects to a
safer place; a surmise strengthened by the circumstance of so few human
skeletons having been found hitherto in the town; in the museum, however,
is a specimen of the inclined couch or sofa, used at meals, with tables,
and other articles of furniture. The method of warming apartments by flues,
and ventilating them, as now practised, was known to the inhabitants of
Pompeii. Of this town, amongst public buildings, the Forum, the Theatre,
and the Temple of Isis, have been discovered; and the latter has revealed,
in a curious manner, the iniquitous jugglery of the heathen priests. The
statue of Isis, was, it seems, oracular, and stood on a very high pedestal,
or kind of altar in the temple of the goddess. Within this pedestal a
flight of steps has been discovered, ascending to a metal tube or pipe;
which, fixed in the hollow body of the statue, and attached to its lips,
the priest of Isis was enabled by speaking through this tube, to make the
poor deluded multitude believe that their idol gave articulate answers to
their anxious queries! We have heard of similar delusions being practised
by _Christian_ priests, in days comparatively modern! But, only let us
conceive, the shame and dismay which would _now_ suffuse the countenance of
one of these worshippers of Pompeian Isis, could he but behold the
deception which had been practised upon him unsuspectedly! I have said,