[Illustration:  Closed House with a Balcony, recently discovered.]

These fountains, which were very simple, consisted of large square basins formed of five stone slabs, one for the bottom and four for the sides, fastened together with iron braces.  The water fell into them from fonts more or less ornamental and usually representing the muzzle of some animal—­lions’ heads, masks, an eagle holding a hare in his beak, with the stream flowing into a receptacle from the hare’s mouth.  One of these fountains is surrounded with an iron railing to prevent passers-by from falling into it.  Another is flanked by a capacious vaulted reservoir (castellum) and closed with a door.  Those who have seen Rome know how important the ancients considered the water that they brought from a distance by means of the enormous aqueducts, the ruins of which still mark all the old territories of the empire.  Water, abundant and limpid, ran everywhere, and was never deficient in the Roman cities.  Still it has not been discovered how the supply was obtained for Pompeii, destitute of springs as that city was, and, at the same time, elevated above the river, and receiving nothing in its cisterns but the rain-water so scantily shed beneath the relentless serenity of that southern sky.  The numberless conduits found, of lead, masonry, and earthenware, and above all, the spouting fountains that leaped and sparkled in the courtyards of the wealthy houses, have led us to suppose the existence of an aqueduct, no longer visible, that supplied all this part of Campania with water.

Besides these fountains, placards and posters enlivened the streets; the walls were covered with them, and, in sundry places, whitewashed patches of masonry served for the announcements so lavishly made public.  These panels, dedicated entirely to the poster business, were called albums.  Anybody and everybody had the right to paint thereon in delicate and slender red letters all the advertisements which now-a-days we print on the last, and even on many other pages of our newspapers.  Nothing is more curious than these inscriptions, which disclose to us all the subjects engaging the attention of the little city; not only its excitements, but its language, ancient and modern, collegiate and common—­the Oscan, the Greek, the Latin, and the local dialect.  Were we learned, or anxious to appear so, we could, with the works of the really erudite (Fiorelli, Garrucci, Mommsen, etc.), to help us, have compiled a chapter of absolutely appalling science in reference to the epigraphic monuments of Pompeii.  We could demonstrate by what gradations the Oscan language—­that of the Pompeian autonomy—­yielded little by little to the Roman language, which was that of the unity of the state; and to what extent Pompeii, which never was a Greek city, employed the sacred idiom of the divine Plato.  We might even add some observations relative to the accent and the dialect of the Pompeians, who pronounced Latin as the Neapolitans pronounce Tuscan and with singularly analogous alterations.  But what you are looking for here, hurried reader, is not erudition, but living movement.  Choose then, in these inscriptions, those that teach us something relative to the manners and customs of this dead people—­dead and buried, but afterward exhumed.