In the main street, which passes in front of the temple of Isis, the portico of the theatre has been discovered; and near the same spot, ten feet below the level of the street, was found a human skeleton, and immediately be neath it a large collection of gold and silver medals in the finest state of preservation, and chiefly belonging to the reign of Domitian.
Beneath a superb portico, in the street of the tombs, a number of skeletons have been discovered; among which are those of a Female and several children. Among the bones were found several car-rings and three finger-rings. Among the vases which were discovered, there were two full of water, and having n small quantity of water at the bottom. The water was limpid and tasteless in the one; but in the other it was of a brownish tinge, and had the taste of icy.
One of the most curious and most complete objects that has yet been discovered at Pompeii, is a villa at a little dis tance from the town. It consists of three courts. In the first and largest of them is a pond, having in the centre an &di. cula, or little temple. There are numerous apartments of every description, which are paved with mosaic, and have their walls decorated with paintings, in a very superior style. The baths in this villa seem to have been objects of particular care.
A public edifice is said to have been recently discovered near the forum of Pompeii. It is supposed to be the Chal cidicum, and it has an inscription which imports that the edifice was built at the expense of the priestess Eumachia. A few days after this discovery, a statue of the same priestess was found in perfect preservation. It is said to surpass in grace, elegance, and grandeur, all the works of art that had previously been dug from that town.
It has been remarked, that Pompeii bears a s'rong re semblance to modern Italian towns, and that in point of general appearance it is superior to them.
The excavations at Pompeii are, we believe, still pro secuted. More than 500 feet of the town ‘vall have been completely cleared. It is from eighteen to twenty feet high, twelve feet thick, and is fortified, at short intervals, with square towers.
Among the recent discoveries at Pompeii may also be enumerated a bronze vase, encrusted with silver, the size and form of which have been much admired; and a bronze statue of Apollo, of admirable workmanship. The deity is represented as sacrificing, with his avenging arm, the family of Niobe ; and the beauty of its form, and the life of the figure, are so fine, that is said to be the finest statue in the Bourbon Museum.
In the year 1819 several surgical instruments were dis covered in the ruins of a house in the Strada Consulare, near the gate adjoining to the burial ground. These instru ments consisted of probes, made of iron; an iron instru ment for extracting teeth ; an elevator, used in the opera tion of trepan ; a cauterizing iron; a female catheter, made of iron; instruments for bleeding; cutting instruments; spatulas, of different forms; and a catheter, with double curvature, like the letter S, and containing the very instru ment which a celebrated and respectable French surgeon, Jean Louis Petit, considered as his own invention. All these instruments are remarkable for the elegance of their form, and show that the Romans had arrived at great per fection in this depai tin ent of the arts. A full account of these different instruments, with a lithographic sketch, was laid before the Medical Society of Emulation, at Paris, by Dr. Sevenko, of St. Petersburg, and has been published in the Bulletin of that society for November, 1821, p. 452.