The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1893-10-20

buS tuOoinoHenI prOcceueu linen the
clouds lifted and the cursing of that
Apollyon of mountains subsidized. For
100 years that city of Pompeii lay
buried and without anything to show
its place of doom. But after 100 years
of obliteration. workman's spade, dig
ging a well, strikes some antiquities
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 Basilica,
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 indescribable 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 11G0
years of burial. That woman was
found clutching her adornments when
the storm of ashes and fire began, and
for 100 years she continued to clutch
them. There at the soldiers barracks
are sixty-four skeletons of - brave
men, who faithfully stood guard
at their post when the tempest
of cinders began, and after 100
years were still found standing
guard. There is the form Of gentle
womanhood impressed upon the hard
ened ashes. Pass along and here we
see the deep ruts in the basaltic pave
ments worn there by the wheels of the
chariots of the first century. There,
over the doorways and in the porticos
are works of art immortalizing the de-
bauchery of Il city, which, notwith-
standing all its spleudors, was vesti-
bule of perdition We staid among
those suggestive scenes after the hour
that visitors are usually allowed there,
and staid until there was not football
to be heard within all that city. except
our own. Up this silent street and
down that silent street we wandered
Into that windowless and roofiess home
we went and came out again on to the
pavementS that, now forsaken, were
once thronged with life.
And eau it be that all up and down
these solemn solitudes, hearts, more
than $500 years ago. ached and re-
joiced, and feet shufiled with the gait
OF old age or danced with childish glee,
and overtasked- workmen carried their
burdens, and drunkards staggered?
While | walked ald contemplated the
city seemed suddenly to be thronged
with all the population that had ever
inhabited IL and heard its laughter
and groan and blasphemy and unclean-
ness and Internal boast, as it was on
the 23d of August, -. And Sesuvius,
from the mild light with which it
flushed the sky that summer evening
as | stood in disentombed Pompeii.
seemed suddenly again to heave and
flame and rock with the lava and dark
ness and desolation and woe, with
which, more than eighteen centuries
ago, it submerged Pompeii as with the
liturgy of fire and storm, the mountain
proclaimed at the burial; "Ashes to
ashes, dust to dust"
My friends, cannot tell what prac-
teal suggestion comes to your mind
from this walk through uncovered
Pompeii, but the first thought that alb
serbs me is that, while art and culture
are important, they cannot save the
morals or the life of great town.
Much of the painting and sculpture of
Pompeii was SO exquisite that, while
some is kept on the walls where it was
first penciled, to be admired by those
who go there, whole wagonloads and
whole rooms full of it have been trans
ferred to the Museo Borbonico at Ma
pies, to be admired by the centuries.
Those Pompeiian artists mixed such
dura bility of colors that though their
paintings were buried in ashes and
scori9 for 100 years, and since they
We're uncovered many of them have
there exposed to the
rains and winds and winters and sum-
mers of $50 years, the color is as
fresh and vivid and true as though yes
terday it had passed from the easel
And yet many of the specimens of Pom
peiian art show that the city was sunk
to such depth of abomination that
there was nothing deeper. Sculptured
and petrified and embalmed abomina-
ton. There was state of public NOR
ais worse than belongs to any city now
standing under the sun. Yet how
many think that all that is necessary
is to cultivate the mind and advance
the knowledge and improve the arts.
Have you the impression that elOquence
will do the elevating work? Why,
Pompeii had Cicero half of every year
for its citizen. Have you the idea that
literature is all that is necessary to
keep a city right? Why, Sallust, with
a pen that was the boast OF Roman lit
erature, had mansion in that doomed
city. Do YOU think that sculpture
and art are quite sufficient for
the production of good morals?
Then correct your delusion by
examining the statutes in the
Temple of Mercury at Pompeii, or the
winged figures of its Parthenon, and
the colonnades and arches of this house
of Diomed. BY all means have schools
and Dusseldorf and Dore exhibitions,
and galleries where the genius of all
the centuries can bank itself up in
snowy sculpture, and all bric-a-brac,
and all pure art, but nothing, save the
religion of Jesus Christ. can make a
city moral. In proportion as churches
and Bibles and Christian printing
presses and revivals of religion abound
is a city clean and pure. What has
Buddhism or Confucianism or Moham-
mechanism done in all the hundreds of
years of their progress for the elevation
of society? Absolutely nothing. Pekin
and Madras and Cairo are just what
they were ages ago, except as Christian
ity has modified their condition. What