after another dropped off into the cabin, and my friend and myself were left alone with the moon and the night. That glorious moolight sail along the coast of Italy has left its bright impression on my heart for ever.

As I rose in the morning and went on deck, the first object that arrested my attention was the top of Vesuvius, which I caught through a notch in the mountain, sending up its dark column of smoke in the morning air. Islands came and passed us, till at length, rounding a point of land, the far-famed Bay of Naples opened before us. I cannot say the entrance struck me as peculiarly beautiful-the approach to Genoa is far more impressive. There is no striking back-ground of hills; and with the exception of St. Elmo, there is nothing on which the eye rests with peculiar interest. The beauty of the bay is seen in riding round it. In this aspect it is unequalled, for wherever you go there bends that same beautiful curve, sprinkled with villages, while Capri and Ischia sleep quietly out at sea. Take away the associations of both, and I think a stranger would be more impressed with the entrance to New York harbor, than with the entrance to the Bay of Naples. Association is everything. Clothe the shore with buried cities, and spread an air of romance over every hill-top, and it is wonderful how different rugged nature will look. On the other hand, let all the associations be those of commerce, and the most beautiful scenery will have a very matter-of-fact appearance. There is a dreamy haze over everything around Naples that gives its scenery a soft and subdued aspect; added to this, there is a dreamy haze also over the spirit, so that it is quite impossible to see ordinary defects. But don't misunderstand methe bay of Naples viewed from shore is the most beautiful bay I have ever seen, but, approached from the sea, inferior to that of New York. Set Vesuvius in motion, and pour its lava in firetorrents down the breast of the mountain, lighting up the shore and sea, and painting in lines of blood on the water each approaching vessel; and make a canopy of cinders and sparks borne hither and thither by the night wind, while the steady working of the fierce volcanic engine is like the sound of heavy thunder-and I grant you that the approach to Naples would be unrivalled.

Truly yours.

LETTER XVI.

Visit to Pompeii-Ruins-Character of the People.

NAPLES, March, 1843.

DEAR E.-The Neapolitan maxim, “Vedi Napoli e poi mori,” "See Naples and then die,"-is not so egotistical. The man who dies without seeing it, that is, in one of its most favorable aspects, loses no ordinary pleasure. There is a combination of scenery here to be found nowhere else, though particular portions of it may be seen in every country. But here is a beautiful bay, islands, cities, villages, palaces, vineyards, plains, mountains, and volcanoes, gathered into one "coup-d'œil." There is the grandeur of the past, and the beauty of the present; ruined temples, and perfect ones; living cities, and buried ones; and over them all a sky that would make any country lovely, however rugged. Day before yesterday I rode out to Pompeii. At 8 o'clock I landed from the steam-boat-at 10 I was on my way with an English gentleman and lady for the city of the dead. It lies twelve miles distant, and in the clear air and new objects that surrounded me, I forgot the object that had hurried me away. Now an old-looking vehicle would pass us, whose shape could hardly be made out, from the number of ragged, dirty beings that covered it—standing, sitting, lying, and indeed piled up in every direction, so as to occupy the least possible space. I counted on several of these two-wheeled, one-horsed vehicles, ten persons. There would sit a row of miserable-looking women outside of their houses, all engaged in the same occupation-looking heads. Here a little urchin would be sitting on the ground, with his head between the knees of a woman who was busy with his head, while behind her stood a third performing the same kind service, and all forming a group both ludicrous and revolting. In another direction would stand a man in the streets with a plate in one hand, while from the other, lifted

over his head, which was thrown back to a horizontal position, hung in tempting profusion long strings of maccaroni, that disappeared down his neck like young snakes in the throat of their mother. Thus we passed along through Torre del Greco, and the ancient Oplonti, and then emerged into the open country, where the piled-up lava and barren hill-sides reminded us that we were approaching a scene of volcanic fury. Yet here and there were green patches from which the balmy bean sent forth its fragrance, contrasting strangely with the lava walls that enclosed them.

We at length reached the gate of the ancient city, where we left our carriage, and commenced the strangest city promenade I ever made. I had always supposed that Pompeii was like Herculaneum, and that one must descend to enter it. But the buried city forms a hill, and is excavated from a level, so that you enter it as you would any other town. We first entered the house of Diomed, one of the aristocrats of the city. We descended into the damp, dark wine cellar, where the bones of his family were found, whither they had fled for safety from the storm of ashes and fire that overwhelmed them. There, against the side of the wall, amid the earthen wine-jars that still stood as they did on the last day of that wild tempest, was the shape of the outstretched arms and the breast and head of her who had fallen against it in her death-agony. Nothing remained but the bones and jewels, to tell the sad story of her torture and suffocation in that dread hour. But I cannot go into details. They have been written over a hundred times. There were baths, and dressing and dining rooms, and work-shops, and wheel-worn streets, where the living multitude had moved, and luxuriated, and toiled. We saw tombs that were themselves entombed; rooms for washing the dead, where the living were suddenly buried unwashed and uncoffined; beer-shops, with the marks of the tumblers still fresh in the smooth marble-and the mill-stones that still turned to the hand in the self-same way they turned nearly two thousand years ago. There too were the brothel, and theatre, and dancing-hall. The secret orifice through which the priest sent his voice to the statue, to delude the people into the belief the god had spoken, was now disclosed. I walked through the house of a poet, into his garnished

sleeping apartments, forming, in their silence, a part in a greater drama than he had ever conceived. I stood before the tavern with the rings yet entire to which the horses were fastened, and where the bones of a mother and her three children were found locked in each other's arms. Temples were overthrown with their altars, and the niches in which stood the gods were now left empty, and the altars before them, on which smoked the sacrifice, silent and lonely. Columns fallen across each other in the courts just as that wild hurricane had left them, pieces of the architrave blocking up the entrances they had surmounted, told how fierce the shock and overthrow had been. One house was evidently that of a remarkably rich man. Mosaic floors representing battle scenes, precious stones still embedded in the pavements of his corridors, long colonnades, and all the appurtenances of luxury, attested the unbounded wealth of the owner. But no bodies were found in it. The rich man had fled with his portable wealth before the storm came. We passed through the temple of Jupiter, the court of Justice, the Forum, the market-place, and finally emerged into the country.

I mounted an old wall, covered with earth, and looked back on the disentombed city, and beyond on Vesuvius. There it stood, solemn, grand, and lonely, sending up its steady column of smoke, a perpetual and living tombstone over the dead at its feet. I could see the track of the lava on its wild and fiery march for the sea, and imagine just how the cloud of ashes and cinders rose from the summit and came flying toward the terror-stricken city. Foot after foot it piled itself in the streets, over the thresholds, above the windows, and so on till it reached twenty or thirty feet above the tops of the houses. There was the sea where the eager Pliny came, and, impelled by a fatal curiosity, would land, till, blinded and suffocated, he too fell with the victims that perished.

From this we went to the amphitheatre, where the gladiatorial shows were held. It is a magnificent area of an oval form, and sufficiently capacious to hold fifteen or twenty thousand specta.

tors.

The dens where the lions were kept still stood, and there was the very area in which men fought and fell. I stood at one end and shouted, and the answering echo came back clear and distinct as a second voice. It enhanced the solitude. Some have

imagined that spectators were assembled here at the time of the overthrow of the city, and as they felt the first step of the mighty earthquake that heralded its doom, rushed in dismay from their seats. But this could not be, for Pompeii did not fall by an earthquake; and the mountain, long before the eruption, gave terribly distinct omens of the coming blow. Dio relates that spectres lined the summit of the mountain, and unearthly shapes flitted around its trembling sides. This was doubtless the mist boiling up from its confinement through the crevices, and shooting into the upper air. Pliny himself says in his epistle that he saw from Misenus, fifteen or twenty miles distant from Naples on the other side, a cloud rising from the mountain in the shape of a pine tree, and shortly after embarked for the city. The groaning mountain was reeling above the sea of fire that boiled under her, and struggled for freedom. It was not a time for amusement. Terrified men and women ran for the sea; that also fled back affrighted from its shores, so that even Pliny could not land before the city, but was forced to proceed to Stabiæ. The bellowing mountain, the sulphureous air, the quivering earth, would not let a city even so dissolute as Pompeii gather to places of public amusement. Consternation reigned in every street, and drove the frightened inhabitants away from their dwellings. This is doubtless the reason why so few bodies were found. Those that perished were slaves, or those who tarried till some falling column or wall blocked up their path, and the descending cinders blinded their sight as they groped about for a way of egress. Fear and darkness (for day was turned into night) might have enthralled others beyond the power of moving. And I was standing on the same pavement those terror-stricken citizens stood on two thousand years ago, and was looking on the same mountain they gazed on with such earnest inquiry and fearful forebodings. Then it rocked and swayed and thundered above the pent-up forces that threatened to send it in fragments through the heavens. Now, silent and quiet, it stood firm on its base. Yet to me it had a morose and revengeful look, as if it were conscious of the ruin at its feet.

The excavations are more extensive than I supposed, and ine effect of the clear light of the sun and the open sky on the deserted