Connecticut western news., 1893-10-12
pointed him in the direction in which l

POlub yOu.
 There is a peculiar cloud on the sky; spotted cloud, now white, now black. It is Vesuvius in awful and unparalleled eruption. Now the smoke and fire and steam of that black monster throat rise and spread, as, by my gesture, I now de- scribe it. It rises, a great column of fiery darkness, higher and higher, and then spreads out like the branches of a tree, with midnights interwrapped in it's 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 aval- anche after avalanche, binding and scalding and suffocating, 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, if not suffocated of the ashes, were scalded to death by the heated del
 
 tion 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 sailcloth on which he was rest ing, under the agitations of what he had seen, he suddenly expired.
 For three days the entombment pro ceeded. Then the clouds lifted, and the cursing of that Apollyon of mountains subsided. For 1.7O0 years that city of Pompeii lay buried and without any thing to show it's place of doom. But after 1,7O0 years of obliteration work mans spade, digging a we'll, strikes some antiquities which lead to the exhuma- tion of the city. Now walk with me through some of the streets and into some of the houses and amid the ruins of basihca and Temple and amphithe- ater.
 EMOTIONS THE SCENE INSPIRES.
 From the moment the guide met us at the gate on entering Pompen that day in November, 1889, until he left us at the gate on our departure, the emotion felt was indescribable for elevation and so- lemnity and sorrow and awe. Come and see the petrifed bodies of the dead found in the city, and now in the museums of Italy. About 450 of those embalmed by that eruption have been recovered. Mother and child, noble and serf, mer- chant and beggar, are presentable and natural after 1.700 years of burial. That woman was found clutching her adorn- ments when the storm of ashes and fire began, and for 1,700 years she continued to clutch them.
 There at the soldiers barracks are GA skeletons of brave men, who faithfully stood guard at their post when the tenn pest of cinders began, and after 1,700 years were still found standing guard. There Is the form of gentle womanhood impressed upon the hardened ashes. Pass along, and here we see the deep ruts in the basaltic pavements worn there by the wheels of the chariots of the first century. There, over the doorways and in the porticoes, are works of art i'm mortalizing the debauchery of city, which, notwithstanding all it's splendors, was vestibule of perdition.
 Those gutters ran with the blood of the gladiators, who were the prizefght- CTS of those ancient times, and 1t was sword parrying sword, until, with one skillful and stout plunge of the sharp edge, the mauled and gashed combatant reeled over dead, to be carried out amid the huzzas of enraptured spectators. We staid among those suggestive scenes after the hour that visitors are usually allowed there and staid until there was not footfall to be heard within all that city except our own. Up this silent street and down that silent street we wander ed. Into that windowless and roofess home we went and came out again onto the pavements that, now forsaken, were once thronged with life.
 And can it be that all up and down these solemn solitudes, hearts more than 1900 years ago ached and rejoiced, and feet shuffed with the gait of old age or danced with childish glee, and overtasked workmen carried their burdens, and drunkards staggered? On that mosaic floor did glowing youth clasp hands in marriage VOW, and cross that threshold did pallbearers carry the, beloved dead, and gay groups once mount those now skeletons of staircases?
 While I walked and contemplated the city seemed suddenly to be thronged with all the population that had ever in- habited 1t, and heard it's laughter and groan and blasphemy and uncleanness and internal boast as 1t was on the 28d |. mild light with which it flushed the sky that summer evening as stood in disen- tombed Pompeii, seemed suddenly again to neave and flame and rock with the lava and darkness and desolation and woe with which more than IS 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 pract- cal suggestion comes to your mind from this walk through uncovered Pompeii. but the first thought that absorbs me is that, while art and culture are impor- life of great town. Much of the paint ing and sculpture of Pompen was so ex- quisite that, while some is kept on the walls where it was first penciled, to be admired by those who go there, whole wagon loads and whole rooms full of it have been transferred to the Museo Bor- bonico at Naples, to be admired by tho centuries.
 Those Pompeiian artists mixed such durability of colors that, though their paintings were buried in ashes and sco- ri@ for 1,700 years, and since they were uncovered many of them have remained there exposed to the rains and winds and winters and summers of 130 years, the color is as fresh and vivid and true as though yesterday it had passed from the easel. Which of our modern paint ings could stand all that? And yet many of the specimens of Pompeiian art show that the city was sunk to such depth of abomination that there was nothing deeper. Sculptured and petrified and en-