Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1893-10-09
LESSONS OF POMPEII.
RIGHTEOUSNESS is LIFE, BUT INlQUl-
TY IS DEATH.

the Ruined City-So1empity and Awe In
Epired by the Surroundings-A Warning
to the Wicked of Today.
BROOKLYN, Oct. SIN his sermon at
the Brooklyn Tabernacle this morning
Rev. Dr.. Talmage presented an arousing
theme of the living cities of today drawn
from the tomb of q dead city of the past.
The opening hymn, led by cornet and or
gan, was joined by the voices of the null
titude:
Arm of tho Lord, awake, awake;
Put on thy strength; the nations shake.
The subject was ''Pompeii and Its Les
sons the text, Isaiah XIV, 2, ''Thou
hast made of defensed city 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. Intoxi-
Gated mountain of Italy. Father of many
considerations. A voicailo, burning SO
long, and yet to keep on burning until,
perhaps, it may be the very torch that
will kindle the last confagration and
set all the world on fire. 1t eclipses in
violence of behavior Cotopaxi and Atna
and Stromboh and Krakatoa. Awful
mystery. Funeral pyre of dead cities.
Everlasting paroxysm of mountains. 1t
seems like a chimney of hell. 1t roars
with fiery Renaissance of what it has
done and with threats of worse things
that it may yet do. I would not live in
one of the villages at its base for pres
emit of all Italy.
On day in December, 1851, it threw
ND ashes that foated away hundreds and
hundreds of miles and dropped in Con-
stantinople, and in the Adriatic sea, and
on the Apennines, as we'll as trampling
out at it's own foot the lives of $4,000
people. Biologists have tried to fathom
its mysteries, but the heat consumed the
iron instruments and drove back the
scorched and blistered explorers from
the cindery and crumbling brink. It
seems like the asylum of maniac ele-
ments.
At one time far back its top had been
fortress, where Spartacus fought and
was surrounded and would have been
destroyed had it not been for the grape
vines which clothed the mountainside
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 No
vember of 1889.
THE DEAD CITY.
Of course the next day we started to
see some of the work wrought by that
frenzied mountain. ':All out for Pom
peiir' was the cry of the conductor. And
now we stand by the corpse of that dead
city. As we entered the gate and passed
I. 4oO IF I,
one naturally does in the presence of
some imposing obsequies. That city had
been at one time capital of beauty and
pomp. The home Of grand architecture,
exquisite painting, enchanting sculpture,
unrestrained carousal and rapt assem-
blage. a high wall 20 feet thick, three
fourths of it still visible, encircled the
city. On those walls at distance of
only 100 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 citys prosperity its
towers glittered in the sun; eight strong
gates for ingress and egress; Gate of the
Seashore, Gate of Herculaneum, Gate of
Vesuvius being perhaps the most inn
portant. Yonder stood the Temple of
Jupiter, hoisted at an imposing eleva-
ton, and with its six corinthian col
umns Of immense girth, which stood like
carved icebergs shimmering in the light
There stands the Temple of the Twelve
Gods. Yonder see the Temple of Her
cules and the Temple of Mercury, with
affairs of marble and bas-relief, wonder
full enough to astound all succeeding
ages of art, and the Temple Of AIscula-
plus, brilliant with sculpture and gor-
geous with painting.
Yonder are the theaters, partly cut
into surrounding hills, and glorified with
pictured walls, and entered under arches
of imposing masonry, and with rooms
for captivated and applaudatory au-
diences seated or standing in vast semi
circle. Yonder are the costly and i'm
mense public baths of the city, with
more than the modern ingenuities of
Carlsbad Notice the warmth of those
ancient tepidariums, with lowering ra-
dance of roof, and the vapor of those
caldariums, with decorated alcoves, and
the cold dash of their frigidariums, with
floors of mosaic and ceilings of all skill
fully intermingled hues, and walls up
upholstered with all the colors of the
setting sun, and sofas ON which to recline
for slumber after the plunge.
Yonder are the barracks of the cele-
brated gladiators. Yonder is the sum-
mer home of Sallust, the Roman histo-
rian and senator, the architecture as
elaborate as his character was corrupt.
There is the residence of the poet Pansa,
with compressed Louvre and Luxem-
bourg within his walls. There is the
home of Lucretius, with vases and an
Equities enough to turn the head of a