The Republican journal., 1870-01-13


to death, and her head was missing when they
found her.
In the street of the tombs, dense crowd must
have jostled each other, some rushing in from the
country to seek safety in the city, and others flying
from the burning houses i'll quest of deliverance
under the open sky. One of them fell forward
with his feet turned toward the Herculaneum gate;
another on his back, with his arms uplifted. He
bore in his hands one hundred and twenty-seven
silver coins and sixty pieces of gold. a third
victim was also on his back; and, singular fact,
they all died looking toward Nesuyius!
A female holding q child in her arms had taken
shelter in a tomb which the volcano shut tight up
on her. soldier, faithful to duty, had remained
erect at his post before the Hercuaneum gate, one
hand upon his mouth and the other on his spear.
In this brave attitude he perishcd. The family of
Domed had assembled in his cellar, where seven
teen victims, women, children, and the young girl
whose throat found moulded i'll the ashes,
were buried alive, clingng closely to each other.
destroyed there by suffocation, Or, perhaps, by
hunger. Arrus Diomed had tried to escape alone,
abandoning his house and taking with him only one
slave, who carried his ,money-wallet. He fell,
struck down by the sitting gases, iii front OF his
own garden. How many other poor wretcheS
there were whose last agonies haye not been dis
closed to us!-the priest of Isis, who enyeloped III
flames and unable to escape into the blazing street
cut through two walls with his axe and yielded his
last breath at the foot of the third, where he had
fallen with fatigue struck down by the deluge OF
ashes, but still clutching his weapon, And the
poor dumb brutes, tied that they could not break
aWay,-the mule in the bakery, the horses i'll the
tavern of Albinus, the goat of Sircus, which had
crouched into the kitchen oven, where it was re-
Gently found, with its bell still attached to its neck
And the prisoners i'll the blackhole of the glad
ators' barracks, ryeted to iron rack that JAM
mel their iegs And the two lovers surprised in
shop near the Therma; both were young, and
they were tightly casped in each others arms 3.
r How awful night and how fearful
morrow! Day has come, but the darkness re-
mains; not that of moOnless night, but that OF
closed room without lamp or candle. At Misenum,
where Plny the younger, who has described the
catastrophe, was stationed, nothing was heard but
the voices of children, of men, and OF women.
calling to each other seeking each other, recognZ
ing each other by their cries alone, invoking death
bursting out in walls and screams of anguish, and
believing that it was the eternal night in which
gods and men alike were rushing headong TO an
Inhalation. Then there fell shower of ishes So
dense that, at the distance of seven leagues from
the volcano, one had to shake ones clothing con
tinually, so as not to sutfocate These ashes Went
it is said, as far as Africa or, at all events to Rome
where they filled the atmosphere and hid the light
OF day, so that even the Romans said: The world
is overturned; the sun is falling on the earth to
bury itself in night, the earth is rising up TO the
sun to be cons umed in his eternal fires" 3" At
ength,' writes Pliny, the light returns gradually,
and the star that sheds it reappeared, but paid
is an eclipse. The whole scene around us wa,
transformers the ashes, like heavy snow, cover
ed everything"
This vast shroui not lifted until the last cen
tury, and the excavations have narrated the cats
trophy with an eloquence which even Pliny him
SELF notwithstanding the resources of his style and
the authority of his testimony, could not attain
The terrible eXtermnator was caught, as il Were,
| in the very act, amid the ruins he had made.
These rootless houses with the height of one story
only remaining and leaving their walls open TO the
sun; these eolonnades that no longer supported
anything; these temples yaWning wide on all sides.
without pedment portico; this silent loneliness
this look of desoation, distress, and naketness
which looked like ruins on the morrow OF great
| fire,-ail were enough to wiring ones heart. But
| there was still more: there were the skeletons
| the midst of the dead, bctraying the anguish and
| the terror of that dreadful hour. Six hundred
perhaps more,-have already been found, each one
| illustrating some poignant episode OF the lmmensr
| catastrophe in which they We're smitten down.
Recently, i'll a small street, under heaps OF rub
| bish, the men working an the excavations per
| ceyed an empty space at the bottom of which
We're some bones They at once called Sgnor
| Fioreli, who had bright idea. He caused some
plaster to be mixed, and poured it Immediately in
! to the hollow, and the same operation was renew
| ed Mt other points where he thought he saw other
similar bones. Atterward, the crust of pumice-
| stone and hardened ashes which had enyeoped, a7
! ii were, i'll u Seabbard this something that they
were trying to discover, was carefully lifted OF.
" hen these materials had been removed, there at-
peared four dead bodies.
Any one can see them now, in the museum ut
Naples; nothing could be more striking than the
| spectacle. They are not statues, but corpse-.
moulded by NesuVus; the skeletons arc still there,
in those castings of plaster which reproduce what
time would have destroyed, and what the damp
,
i might almost say the life The bones peep thro'
here and there, in certain places Which the plaster
| did not reach. Nowhere else is there anything
like this to be seen. The Egyptian mummies ARE
naked, blackened, hideous; they no longer have
anything in common with us; they are aid out tol
their eternal sleep i'll the consecrated attitude But
! the eXhuned Pompeians are human beings whom
one sees in the agOnies Of death.
| One of these bodies is that of woman ne;il
whom were picked up ninety-one pieces Of coin.
two silver urns, and some keys and Jewels. She
was endeav0rng to escape, taking with her these
precious articles when she fell down in the narrow
/ street. You still her lying her left side
her head-dress can very readily be made out, as
also can the texture OF her clothing and two silver
rings which she still has her finger; of her
hands is broken, and you the cellular structure
OF the bone; her left arm is lifted and distorted
her delicate hand is so tightly clenched that you
would say the nails penetrate the flesh; her whole
body appears swollen and contracted; the legs on
lily, which very slender, remain extended. Duc
feels that she struggled long time i'll horrible
agony; her whole attitude is that OF anguish, not
of death.
Behind her had fallen a woman anda young girl
the elder of the two the mother, perhaps, was OF
humble birth, to judge by the size of her ears; on
her finger she had only an iron ring: her LEFT les
lifted and cOntOred, shows that she. too, suffered
not so much, however, as the noble lady the poor
have less to lose in dying. Near her rs though
upon the same bed, lies the young girl; one at the
head, and the other at the foot, and their legs
|crossed. This young girl, almost Il child, produces
u strange impression; one sees exactly the tissue
4 the stitches Of her clothing, the sleeves that cover
ed her arms almost to the wrists, some rents herr
and there that show the naked flesh, and the EN-
broidery of the little shoes III which she walked
but above all, you witness her last hour, ns though
you had been there, beneath the wrath OF NesuN
ius; she had thrown her dress her head, like
the daughter of Diomed because she was afraid
she had fallen in running, with her face to the
ground, and not being able to rise again. had rested
her young, frail head upon one of her arms. Onf
of her hands was half open, as though she hsI
been holding something, the veil, perhaps, thai