Connecticut western news., 1893-10-12
LESSONS OF POMPEII.
RIGHTEOUSNESS IS LIFE, BUT iNlQUi-
 TY IS DEATH.

Rev. Dr. Talmage's Vivid Description of the Ruined City-solemnity and Awe In-
 spired by the Surroundings-AW Warning to the Wicked of Today.
 the Brooklyn Tabernacle this morning Rev. Dr. Talmage presented an arousing theme of the living cities of today drawn from the tomb of 8 dead city of the past. The opening hymn, led by cornet and or gan, was joined by the voices of the mul- J ICtitude:
 Arm of the Lord, awake, awake;
 Put on thy strength; the nations shake. g The subject was "Pompen and Its Les sons;" the text, Isaiah XIV, 9, "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? It was that wrath of many centuries vius. Giant son of an earthquake. Intoxi- cated mountain of Italy. Father of many transformations. A volcano, burning so long, and yet to keep on burning until, perhaps, it may be the very torch that will kindle the last conhagration and set all the world on fire. It ecipses in violence of behavior Cotopaxi and Etna q and Stromboi and Krakatoa. Awful mystery. Funeral pyre of dead cities. Everlasting paroxysm of mountains. It '' seems like chimney of hell. It roars with fiery reminiscence 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 ent of all Italy.
 On day in December, 1881, it threw up ashes that foated away hundreds and hundreds of miles and dropped in Con- stantinople, and in the Adriatic sea, and on the Apennines, as well as tramping out at its own foot the lives of 18,000 people. Geologists have tried to fathom it's mysteries, but the heat consumed the iron instruments and drove back the scorched and blistered explorers from seems like the asylum of maniac ele- ments.
 At one time far back it's 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 it's 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. "An 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 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 capital of beauty and pomp. The home of grand architecture, exquisite painting, enchanting sculpture, unrestrained carousal and rapt assem- blaze. A high wall 20 feet thick, three fourths of it still visible, encircled the city. On those walls at 8 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 city's 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. Wonder stood the Temple of Jupiter, hoistsd at an imposing eleva- tion, and with it's six corinthiRn col umns of immense girth, which stood like carved icebergs shimmering in the light. There stands the Temple of the Twelve Gods. Wonder see the Temple of Her. cules and the Temple of Mercury, with altars of marble and bas-relief, wonder ful enough to astound all succeeding ages of art, and the Temple of Escula- plus, brilliant with sculpture and gor- geous with painting.
 Wonder are the theaters, partly cut into surrounding hills, and glorifed 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. Wonder are the costly and inn mense public baths of the city, with more than the modern ingenuities of Carlsbad. Notice the warmth of those ancient tepidariums, with lowering ra- diance 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.
 Wonder are the barracks of the cele- %ol ..1c S-Az . kl mer home of Sa1lust, 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- tiquities enough to turn the head of virtuoso. Wonder see the Forum, at the highest place in the city. It is entered by two triumphal arches. It is bound ed on three sides by doric columns.
 Wonder, in the suburbs of the city, Is the home of Arrius Diomed, the mayor of the suburbs, terraced residence of billionairedom. gardens, fountained, statued, colonnaded, the cellar of that villa filled with bottles of rarest wine, a few drops of which were found 1,8OO years afterward. Along the streets of the city are men of might and women of beauty formed into bronze that many r centuries had no power to bedim. Bat tie scenes on walls in colors which all time cannot efface. Great city of Pom peii! So Seneca and Tacitus and Cicero i. pronounced it.
 z. VEsUvIUS IN ERUPTION.
 Stand with me on it's walls this even ing of Aug. 28, A. b 79. See the throngs passing up and down in Tyrian purple and girdles of arabesque, and necks en- chained with precious stones, proud off, cial in imposing toga meeting the slave carrying trays a-clink with goblets and s-smoke with delicacies from paddock and sea, and moralist musing over the