Pompeii Author:William Clarke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Cent. Bet-hives, made of bronze. Chapter IV. PRIVATE HOl'SES. We have stated in the first volume, that up to the last accounts we have obtained, the... more »re are excavated about eighty houses, together with a very large number of small shops. To notice all these houses, even if there were materials for it, would be wearisome in the extreme: we intend, therefore, merely to select a few of the most important, to be described at length, the arrangement of which may serve, with variations according to place and circumstances, as a type of the whole. Some, which offer no particularity in their construction, are remarkable for the beauty of their paintings, or other decorations; and, indeed, it is from the paintings on the walls that most of the houses have derived their names. Some again are designated from some accident, as the presence of a distinguished person at their excavation; for instance, that called the House of the Emperor Joseph II. As it is the object of this work to convey a general notion of the remains of Pompeii, and to exhibit, as far as our materials will permit, the private life of the first century in all its degrees, we shall begin with one or two of the shops; which present great similarity in their arrangements, and indicate that the tribe of shopkeepers was very inferior in wealth and comfort to those of our own time and country.- They are for the most part very small, and sometimes without any interior apartment on the ground floor. The upper floor must have comprised one or two sleeping-rooms ; but there is, as we believe, no house in which the upper floor is in existence. It is rare at Pompeii to see a whole house set apart for purposes of trade,, a part being occupied by the shop itself, the rest furnishing a comfortable dwelling for the owne...« less