Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 October 1875 — Excavations at Pompeii. [ARTICLE]

Excavations at Pompeii.

Those who remember the three bodies, incrusted in their coating of lava and ashes, in one of the houses at Pompeii, will feel interested in knowing that other bodies have recently been uncovered. One is that of a woman, found lying on her face, with her hands raised above her, as if to shield her eyes from the falling ashes. The form of a man is clearly visible in one of the bodies, which w’as found resting on its side. Another discovery was that of a dog, petrified in its very agony, with one foot in his mouth. (After a sleep of nearly 2,000 .years these forms are excavated from their stony bed, to be the wonder of the nineteenth century. Other curiosities have been recently brought to light. Several houses and shops have been uncovered. In two' oi the houses have been found tablets bearing inscriptions. They were"qf wood, and had been joined together by means of cords. The writing is still legible, and Bfter 1,800 years we can read the contracts of loans and acquittance made between merchants in the first Christian era. One house, supposed to have been that of a rich banker, contained beautiful marbles, frescoes and bronzes. A portrait-bust in bronze was found, and several richlypainted heads, a fresco of “Adriadne abandoned by Theseus;” tie Judgment of Paris,” and a hunting sci pe. A writer in Appletons' Journal speaks of these discoveries, and also records that in this beautiful dwelling a marble half-bust of a man was found, where the dog before alluded to was guarding the doorway. But the chief ornament of the dwelling was a fresco of Orpheus, colossal in size, playing on a harp and descending a flight of stone steps, followed by a lion on one side and a tiger on the other, while below are a boar and a fawn, all evidently entranced by the music. The face of Orpheus is very fine. In the dining-room is represented a temple containing a burning sacrificial altar, directly over which a full-length figure of Diana is seen, while, higher above, Minerva is hovering. The decorations in another room are in the Egyptian style; there are figures of warriors, an ibis, and a landscape, in which is a Hermes of Priapus. A statuette of Venus was found in a house containing a bakeiy r , and also a fresco representing Hercules landing at Sicily.

On the walls of other shops were frescoes of Mercury aud Bacchus, Venus and Cupid, and many inscriptions written in vermilion. One building excavated was a well-arranged kitchen, with a bronze kettle hanging over the fire-place. The court had a marble fountain and a white marble table. The marble water-tanks on the sides had openings for the pipes. A quantity of substance on being analyzed proved to be soap. From the frescoes on the wall it is believed that the shop was that of a dyer or cleaner. The movable articles, especially the bronzes there found, were.ponveyed to the museum at Naples, to tie placed beside the charred bread and the mosaic dog, so familiar to all visitors to that institution. The work of excavation goes on slowly, but satisfactorily. The works of art, so beautiful, even in their ruin, give evidence of the skill of the workmen and the artistic taste of the designers of those days. The unveiling of a whole city, with its monuments, its nouses and its deep-rutteri-streets; the discovery of articles of dally use, and the very bodies of men ana women engaged in pursuits of every-day life, is something the world has never before witnessed. Yet under the Tiber and buried beneath the soil of Rome are, doubtless, other and greater treasures, which time will yet reveaL —Brooklyn (N. T.) Union.