ways,—­how many different subjects!  But I have said nothing yet.  The Pompeians especially excelled in fancy pictures.  Everybody has seen those swarms of little genii that, fluttering down upon the walls of their houses, wove crowns or garlands, angled with the rod and line, chased birds, sawed planks, planed tables, raced in chariots, or danced on the tight-rope, holding up thyrses for balancing poles; one bent over, another kneeling, a third making a jet of wine spirt forth from a horn into a vase, a fourth playing on the lyre, and a fifth on the double flute, without leaving the tight-rope that bends beneath their nimble feet.  But more beautiful than these divine rope-dancers were the female dancers, who floated about, perfect prodigies of self-possession and buoyancy, rising of themselves from the ground and sustained without an effort in the voluptuous air that cradled them.  You may see these all at the museum in Naples,—­the nymph who clashes the cymbals, and one who drums the tambourine; another who holds aloft a branch of cedar and a golden sceptre; one who is handing a plate of figs; and her, too who has a basket on her head and a thyrsis in her hand.  Another in dancing uncovers her neck and her shoulders, and a third, with her head thrown back, and her eyes uplifted to heaven, inflates her veil as though to fly away.  Here is one dropping bunches of flowers in a fold of her robe, and there another who holds a golden plate in this hand, while with that she covers her brows with an undulating pallium, like a bird putting its head under its wing.

There are some almost nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues quite transparent and woven of the air.  Some again wrap themselves in thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall; two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward together.  As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many are the different dances, attitudes, movements, undulations, characteristics, and dissimilar ways of removing and putting on veils; infinite variations, in fine, upon two notes that vibrate with voluptuous luxuriance, and in a thousand ways.

Let us continue:  We are sweeping into the full tide of mythology.  All the ancient divinities will pass before us,—­now isolated (like the fine, nay, truly imposing Ceres in the house of Castor and Pollux), now grouped in well-known scenes, some of which often recur on the Pompeian walls.  Thus, the education of Bacchus, his relations with Silenus; the romantic story of Ariadne; the loves of Jupiter, Apollo, and Daphne; Mars and Venus; Adonis dying; Zephyr and Flora; but, above all, the heroes of renown, Theseus and Andromeda, Meleager, Jason, heads of Hercules; his twelve labors, his combat with the Nemaean lion, his weaknesses,—­such are the episodes most in favor with the decorative artists of the little city.  Sometimes they take their subjects from the poems of Virgil, but oftener from those of Homer.  I might cite a whole house,