The Herculaneum road formed a delightful promenade at the gates of Pompeii; a street lined with trees and villas, like the Champs Elysees at Paris, and descending from the city to the country between two rows of jaunty monuments prettily-adorned, niches, kiosks, and gay pavilions, from which the view was admirable.  This promenade was the cemetery of Pompeii.  But let not this intimation trouble you, for nothing was less mournful in ancient times than a cemetery.  The ancients were not fond of death; they even avoided pronouncing its name, and resorted to all sorts of subterfuges to avoid the doleful word.  They spoke of the deceased as “those who had been,” or “those who are gone.”  Very demonstrative, at the first moment they would utter loud lamentations.  Their sorrow thus vented its first paroxysms.  But the first explosion over, there remained none of that clinging melancholy or serious impression that continues in our Christian countries.  The natives of the south are epicureans in their religious belief, as in their habits of life.  Their cemeteries were spacious avenues, and children played jackstones on the tombs.

Would you like to hear a few details in reference to the interments of the ancients.  “The usage was this,” says Claude Guichard, a doctor at law, in his book concerning funereal rites, printed at Lyons, in 1581, by Jean de Tournes:  “When the sick person was in extreme danger, his relatives came to see him, seated themselves on his bed, and kept him company until the death-rattle came on and his features began to assume the dying look.  Then the nearest relative among them, all in tears, approached the patient and embraced him closely, breast against breast and face against face, so as to receive his soul, and mouth to mouth, catching his last breath; which done, he pressed together the lips and eyes of the dead man, arranging them decently, so that the persons present might not see the eyes of the deceased open, for, according to their customs, it was not allowable to the living to see the eyes of the dead....  Then the room was opened on all sides, and they allowed all persons belonging to the family and neighborhood, to come in, who chose.  Then, three or four of them began to bewail the deceased and call to him repeatedly, and, perceiving that he did not reply one word, they went out and told of the death.  Then the near relatives went to the bedside to give the last kiss to the deceased, and handed him over to the chambermaids of the house, if he was a person of the lower class.  If he was one of the eminent men and heads of families, he committed him to the care of people authorized to perform this office, to wash, anoint, and dress him, in accordance with the custom and what was requisite in view of the quality, greatness, and rank of the personage.”