That In Each Building There Is A Court Yard In The Centre, Something Like The Court Yard Of A Convent, Which Is Sometimes Paved In Mosaic, And Generally Surrounded By Columns; In The Middle Of This Court Is A Fountain Or Basin:

The court has no roof and the wings of the house form a quadrangle environing it.

The windows and doors of the rooms are made in the interior sides of the quadrangle looking into the court yard; on the exterior there appears to be only a small latticed window near the top of the room to admit light. I have seen in Egypt and in India similarly built houses, and it is the general style of building in Andalusia and Barbary. In the rooms are niches in the walls for lamps, precisely in the style of the Moorish buildings in India.

In many of the chambers of the houses at Pompeii are paintings al fresco and arabesques on the walls which on being washed with water appear perfectly fresh. The subjects of these paintings are generally from the mythology. In some of the rooms are paintings al fresco of fish, flesh, fowl and fruit; in others Venus and the Graces at their toilette, from which we may infer that the former were dining rooms and the latter boudoirs. A large villa (so I deem it as it stands without the gates) has a number of rooms, two stories entire and three court yards with fountains, many beautiful fresco paintings on the walls of the chambers.

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