Herald and news. [volume] (West Randolph, Vt.) 1878-1943, 1893-10-26

streets paved with blocks of basalt
see the verdured and lowered GROUND,
sloping into the most beautiful bav n.
ali the earth-the Bay of Naples. Lis
ten TO the rumbling chariots, CARRYING
cornwall occupants to the hall of nirth
and masquerade and carousal. Hear
the loud dash of fountains amid the
sculptured water nymphs Notice the
weird. solemn, far-reaching hum and
lin and roar of a city at the close of a
summer day Let Pompeii sleep we'll
tonight, for it IS the last night of
peaceful slumber before she falls into
the deep siumber of many long CEN
turies The morning of the cath of
August A. ID. 10, has arrived, and the
lay rolls on; and it is o'clock in the
afternoon: Look" | say to you.
standing on this wall. as the sister of
Pliny said TO MIN. the Roman essayist
and naval commander, on the day of
which speak, as she pointed him in
the direction in which | point you.
There is peculiar cloud in the sky; a
] spotted cloud, now white, now black.
1t IS Nesuvius in awful and unparal-
leled eruption. Now the smoke and
ire and steam of that black monster
| throat rise and spread as, by my GEES
ture, | now describe ii. It rises a
great column of fiery darkness. higher
and higher, and then spreads out like
the branches OF tree with midnights
interwrapped in its foliage, wider and
wider Now the sun goes out and
showers of pumice stone and water
from furnaces more than seven times
heated, and ashes in avalanche after
avalanche, binding and sealding and
sutfocating, descend north, south, east
and west burying deeper and deeper
in mammoth sepulcher, such as never
before or since was opened, Stabia,
Herculaneum, and Pompeii Ashes
ankle deep, girdle deep, chin deep,
ashes overhead. Out of the houses
and temples and theaters, and into the
streets and down TO the beach fled
many of the frantic, but others, il not
sutfocated of the ashes, We're scalded
to death by the heated deluge. And
then came heavier destruction in rocks
after rocks, crushing in homes and
temples and theaters. No wonder the
sea receded from the beach as
though in terror, until much of the
shipping was wrecked, and no wonder
that when they lifted Pliny the elder
from the sail cloth on which he was
resting, under the agitations of what
he had seen, he suddenly expired. For
three days the entombment proceeded
Then the clouds lifted and the cursing
of that Apollyon of Mountains sub
sided. For seventeen hundred years
that city of Pompeii Jay buried and
without anything to show its place of
doom. But after seventeen hundred |
years of obliteration, worlxman's |
spade digging well, strikes some an
tiquities which lead to the exhumation |
OF the city. Now walk with me through |
some of the streets and into some of |
the houses and amid the ruins of basil |
ca, and temple and amphitheater.
From the moment the guide met us
at the gate on entering Pompeii that |
day in November, 1889, until he left us
at the gate on our departure, the emo
ton felt was Undesirable for eleva-
ton and solemnity and sorrow and
awe. Come and see the petrified bodies
of the dead found in the city and now
in the museums of Italy. About $50 Of
those embalmed by that eruption have
been recovered. Mother and child,
noble and serf, merchant and beggar
are presentable and natural after sew
enteen hundred years of burial. That
woman was found clutching her adorn-
ments when the storm of ashes and
fire began and for seventeen hundred
years she continued to clutch them
There at the soldiers barracks are six
ty-four skeletons of brave men, who
stood guard at their post
when the tempest of cinders began.
and after seventeen hundred years
were still found standing guard. There
is the form of gentle womanhood inn
pressed upon the hardened ashes. Pass
along. and here we see the deep ruts in
the basaltic pavements worn there by
She wheels of the chariots of the first
century. There, over the doorways and
the porticos, are works of art immor-
talizing the debauchery of a city, which, q,
Notwithstanding all its splendors was {
i vestibule of perdition. Those gut
ters ran with the blood of the gladia- {
tors, who were the prize fighters of /
those ancient times, and it was sword ,
parrving sword, until, with one skill 9
ful and stout plunge of the sharp edge, I
The mauled and gashed combatants
-eeled over dead, to be carried out {
amid the huzzas of enraptured specta- :
.ors. We stand amid those suggestive a
scenes after the hour that visitors are I
Usually allowed there, and staid until G
here was not a football to be heard |
within all that city, except our own. {
N this silent street and down that 5
,iient street we wandered. Into that e
and roofless home we went J
md came out again on the pavements '
hat. now forsalsen, were once thronged n
With life. 4
And can it be that all up and down b
bese solemn solitudes, hearts. more il
han eighteen hundred years ago, h
cbad and reioiced. and feet shutfied q