The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-09
PONPEll AND ITS LESSONS.
Talmage breaches a Sermon on The
Volcano Of IeSuviuS.

the Doomed City The Three Days of
Death and Destruction-The Lessons
the Story of the City's Destruction
Teaches.
Brooklyn, Oct SIN his sermon at the
Brooklyn tabernacle, this morning, Rev.
DIR. Talmage presented an arousing theme
of the living cities of to-day drawn from
the tomb of a dead city of the past. The
opening hymn, led by cornet and organ,
was joined by the voices of the multitude:
Arm Of the Lord awake awake,
Put on thy strength, the nations shake
The subject was "Pompeii and its Les
sons The text, Isaiah D 2. Thou hast
made of a defenced city a ruin
A flash on the night sky greeted US as
we left the rail train at Naples, Italy.
What was the strange illumination 1t
was that wrath of many centuries-Vesu-
vius Giant son of an earthquake In
toxicated mountain of Italy. Father of
many considerations. A volcano, burn
ing so long, and yet to keep on burning
until. perhaps, it may be the very torch
that will kindle the last cOntiagratlon
and set all the world on fire. 1t eclipses
in violence of behavior CotopaN and
-Etna and Stromboli and Krakatoa.
Awful myrtery. Funeral pyre of
dead cities. Everlasting parox-
ysm of mountains. 1t seems like chin
ney of hell 1t roars with fiery rem
iniscence of what it has done, and
with threats of worse things that
it may yet do. l would not live in
one of the villages at its base for a pres
ent of all Italy. ON day in December,
1881. it threw up ashes that toated away
hundreds and hundreds of miles, and
dropped in COnstantinople and IN The Adj
ratio sea and on the Apennnes, as well
as trampling out at its own foot the lives
of $1,000 people Biologists have tried to
fathOm it's mysteries, but the heat con
Sumed the iron instruments and drove
back the scorched and blistered explorers
from the cindery and crumbling brink.
1t seems like the asylum of maniac ele
ments At one time far back its top had
been a fortress, where Spartacus fought
and was surrounded, and would have
been destroyed had it not been for the
grape vines which clothed the mountain
side from top TO base, and laying hold of
them he climbed hand under hand to
safety in the valley. But for centuries
it has kept its furnace burning as we saw
it that night on our arrival in November
of 1889.
OF course the next day we started to
see some of the work wrought by that
frenzied mountain. "All out for Pom
peiil7 was the cry of the conductor
And now we stand by the corpse of that
dead city. And as we entered'the gate and
pass ed between the walls, | took off my
hat, as one naturally does in the presence
of some imposing Obsequies That city
had been at one time a capital of beauty
and pomp, the home of grand architec-
ture, exquisite painting, enchanting
sculpture, unrestrained carousal, and
rapt assemblage. A high wall, twenty
feet thick, three-fourths of it still visible,
encircled the city On these walls at a
distance of only one hundred yards from
each other, towers rose for armed men
who watched the city. The streets ran
at right angles and from wall to wall,
only one street excepted. In The days of
the city's prosperity, its towers glittered
in the sun; eight strong gates for ingress
and egress Gate of the Sea Shore, Gate
of Herculaneum, Gate of Nesuvius being,
perhaps, the most important. Yonder
stood the temple of Jupiter, hoisted at an
imposing elevation, and with its six
COrinthian columns of immense glrth,
which stood like carved icebergs, SHIN
mering in the light There stands the
Temple of the Twelve Gods. Yonder see
the Temple of Hercules, and the Temple
of Mercury, with affairs of marble and
bas relief wonderful enough to astound
all succeeding ages of art, and the Temple
of 4ESculapius, brilliant with sculpture
and gorgeous with painting. Yonder are
hills and glorifed with pictured walls
and entered under arches of
imposing masonry, and with rooms for
captivated and applaudatory audiences,
seated or standing, in vast semi-circle.
YOndera are the costly and immense public
baths of the city, with more than the
modern ingenuities of Carlsbad Notice
the warmth of those ancient tepidariums
with lowering radiance of roof, and the
vapor of those caldariumS with decorated
alcoves and the cold dash of their frigid-
ariums, with floors of mosaic, and ceilings
of all skillfully intermingled hues, and
walls upholstered with all the cOlOrs of
the setting sun and sofas on which to re-
cline for slumber after the plunge. Gonder
are the barracks of the celebrated gladia-
tors. Yonder is the summer home of
Sallust, the Roman historian and senator,
the architecture as elaborate as his
character was corrupt. There is the
residence of the poet Pansa, with a com
pressed Louvre and Luxembourg within
his walls. There is the home of Lucre-
titus, with vases and ANTIQUITIES
enough to turn the head of a virtuoso.
Yonder see the Forum, at the highest
place of the city. 1t is entered by two
triumphal arches. 1t is bounded on three
sides by Doric columns. Yonder, in the
suburbs of the city, IS the home of Arrius
Diomed the mayor of the suburbs, ter
IdCEQ TtSluGutC OI DllllOUdlftuOul, gar
dens, fountained, statued, colOnnaded, 1.-THE
cellar of that villa filled with bottles of
rarest wine, a few drops of which were
found eighteen hundred years afterward.
Along the streets of the city are men of
might and women of beauty formed into
bronze that many centuriesIhad no power
to bedim. Battle scenes on walls in
colors which all time cannot efface
Great city of Pompeii! So Seneca and
Tacitus and Cicero pronounced it.
Stand with me on its walls this evening
of August %, A. D., 20. See the throngs
passing up and down in Tyrian pur-
pie and girdles of arabesque and necks
enchanted with precious stones, proud Of
fetal in imposing toga, meeting the slave
carrying trays a-clink with goblets and
a-smOke with delicacies from paddock
and sea and moralist musing over the
degradation of the times passes the prof
ligate doing his best to make them worse.
Hark to the clatter and rataplan of the
hoofs on the streets paved with blocks OF
basalt. See the verdured and lowered
grounds slOping into the most beautiful
bay Of all the earth-the bay of Naples.
Listen to the rumbling charots. carrying
cOnvivial occupants to halls of mirth and
masquerade and carOusal. Hear the loud
dash of fountains amid the sculptured
water nymphs. Notice the weird, solemn,
far-reaching hum and din and roar of a city
at the close of summer day. Let Pom