made, and that it was customary to work out the portrait of the deceased
upon the blank face in the centre; but when there was a necessity for
sudden burial, as may have been the case in the present instance, this
was dispensed with.

The inner tomb was found without any earth in it, just as it had been
left when the last old Roman was buried there; and it being only a week
or two since it was opened, there was very little intervention of
persons, though much of time, between the departure of the friends of the
dead and our own visit. It is a square room, with a mosaic pavement, and
is six or seven paces in length and breadth, and as much in height to the
vaulted roof. The roof and upper walls are beautifully ornamented with
frescos, which were very bright when first discovered, but have rapidly
faded since the admission of the air, though the graceful and joyous
designs, flowers and fruits and trees, are still perfectly discernible.
The room must have been anything but sad and funereal; on the contrary,
as cheerful a saloon, and as brilliant, if lighted up, as one could
desire to feast in. It contained several marble sarcophagi, covering
indeed almost the whole floor, and each of them as much as three or four
feet in length, and two much longer. The longer ones I did not
particularly examine, and they seemed comparatively plainer; but the
smaller sarcophagi were covered with the most delicately wrought and
beautiful bas-reliefs that I ever beheld; a throng of glad and lovely
shapes in marble clustering thickly and chasing one another round the
sides of these old stone coffins. The work was as perfect as when the
sculptor gave it his last touch; and if he had wrought it to be placed in
a frequented hall, to be seen and admired by continual crowds as long as
the marble should endure, he could not have chiselled with better skill
and care, though his work was to be shut up in the depths of a tomb
forever. This seems to me the strangest thing in the world, the most