chastened anchorite. Besides, we doubt | party, on joining their friends, have many if the fasting anchorites of old kept a couple of such well-fed and insolent cats in their narrow cell as has the hermit of Vesuvius. There is a dog besides; but he has an altogether inferior standing in the establishment, a submissive member of the laity, evidently completely domineered over by the pampered cats. While we are almost fighting with these last individuals for the possession of our cold fowls and sandwiches, Gennaro and his colleagues are rolling luxuriously in the ashes outside, sending up volumes of dust as black as soot. However, they are soon upon their legs again, and carry us kindly to the grand bivouac for the mules, within the sharp and jagged walls of the old crater. This extinct crater is like some gigantic broken shell, which has long ago exploded, and flung far and wide its deathdispensing contents. Within its shivered hollow there is already a considerable encampment of mules; and Gennaro and his civilities and bravadoes to exchange. But now begin the true difficulties of the ascent, and now Matteo is in his fiery element. He shouts, he gathers around him a whole troop of subsidiary guides, he collects chaises à porteurs for the less robust of our party, he fastens leather straps to his own belt and to the belts of his men, for the panting gentlemen to drag and hang upon. And now we are off again. Mounted on a straight-backed wooden chair, bound between two poles, up into the air you go, on the shoulders of now four, now six, screaming, struggling porters. But soon the sides of the coneshaped mountain become so almost impracticably steep, that at last no fewer than eight get a grasp at you, plunging into black dusty mold a foot deep at every step, and sliding backward a foot more. The blocks of cinder-like lava, hanging loosely together, are now like the broken rocks on a storm-swept shore. You feel 66 as if the chair must be dislocated, and sides. Matteo again seizes your arm, for your own joints also. Coraggio, corag- he knows what is coming; it is an awful gio," (Courage,) shout the gasping burden- explosion, like the blowing up of a citabearers, in mutual exhortation; and down del, and a burst of flame tears its way up comes a porter between two huge cinders, into the air from the unknown depths of and your equipage suddenly becomes lop- the burning mine. Explosion rapidly folsided. "Coraggio," again vociferate the lows explosion, and your only way of dark wrestlers; and you are scarcely counting time is by those mighty minuterighted, before down go three, four, six; guns of the mountain. Between you and and if you gaspingly plead, "Aspettate!" the acting cone, a broad canal of liquid (Wait a bit!) down they all lie together, lava heaves and surges on in slow and wallowing in the ashes, dark, wild, and slime-like flow. Now a great black rock, picturesque, while you sit up in the cen- undermined by the current, is separated ter of this singular group on your high- from the shore, and borne heavily onward, backed chair. grating, and crunching, and moaning, as it is ground against the banks of the red river. Shall we say what scene of unspeakable awe seems to be represented before the eye at this fearful moment? Need we say how solemnly sounds the language in the awakened ear: "Who can dwell with everlasting burnings?" Ah, sinner! heedest thou not the threat of "the fire which shall never be quenched ?" Then, come and stand where I stand, beside this lake burning with fire and brimstone, where "the smoke" seems to " rise up for ever and ever." Come and stand where I stand, where the mephitic smell of the sulphur, and the hot escape of the pent-up gases, are like to take away one's breath; where the face is scorched and the hair shriveled by the fierce reflection, and the feet are burned by the heated crust. Now is your moment to glance over your shoulder down upon the strange and beautiful world below. There lies that peerless bay, taking its evening rest under the pearly touch of the sunset sky. There that resplendent chain of islands gleams out of the fading distance in all the hues of the dying dolphin. There, headland beyond headland flushes and fades by turns, until, overcome by the crimson glory of the sunset, they drop off into faint and dreamy sleep. There is the shining city drawing its glittering lines of white along the margin of the blue sea. Immediately beneath you lie, in dark confusion, the hardened waves of a once gleaming tide. Before and behind you, dragged by one guide, and propelled by another, the excited strangers reel and wrestle up the steep. The short-lived twilight soon withdraws, and leaves the scene to the fierce fires which are waiting to glare forth upon earth, sea, and sky. The cloud of smoke over the mountain rolls off in writhing folds of red, rent at intervals by sudden bursts of flame. Long stripes which, in the brightness of an Italian day, had only looked like wreaths of curling smoke down the sides of the great cone, now confess their veiled life, and become paths of fire. And now Matteo seizes your arm, and looks full in your face, to see how you brook the wondrous scene which is about to burn its life-long stamp upon your mind. Yes; you are on the edge of a rent and shivered basin, encumbered with its own seared fragments. From its midst rises a smaller cone, the living, acting crater, ever feeding its own growth with the red-hot stones which it flings up from its burning lips, which dart up into the sky, and then fall, like a shower of red meteors, upon its 66 Enough, Matteo: we have done and dared enough." "Nay, pardon, but 'cellenza may safely approach nearer to the edge of the flowing lava. He will answer for 'cellenza's invaluable safety. Ah! think, would he -he, Matteo, who had lived a whole life of eruptions-would he risk 'cellenza's precious life? Pardon-'cellenza's hand." And so we leap-over a rock of cooled lava? Nay, but over a narrow chasm— a cleft, which, red and burning, carries eye and mind down into the heart of the living volcano -a fiery gulf, which no "deep-sea lead" would fathom. "Now, then, Matteo, that will do ;" and so, turning our back unwillingly upon this scene of indescribable magnificence, we rapidly plunge down through the deep ashes, until we rejoin Gennaro and his friends at the grand encampment of the mules, our route marked by a long line of flashing and flaring torches. 0F% SCENES FROM COUNTRY LIFE. know the harvest home, of which so much | The Muse might sing too; for he well did has been said and written, thus sang Clare: The freaks and plays that harvest-labor end: How the last load is crown'd with boughs, and how The swains and maids with fork and rake With floating ribbons 'dizen'd at the end; And how the dames peep out to mark the And all the feats that crown the harvest-supper night. The same subject inspired the sweet muse of Von Salis when he sang the following strain: Autumn winds are sighing, Through the pine-groves shivering, See the fields, how yellow! Clusters, bright and mellow, Gleam on every hill; Nectar fills the fountains, Crowns the sunny mountains, Runs in every rill. Now the lads are springing, Maidens blithe are singing, Swells the harvest strain: Every field rejoices; Thousand thankful voices Mingle on the plain. Then, when day declineth, And, while they are sounding, O'er the moonlit ground. Shearing time is painted as follows by Dyer: If verdant elder spreads Her silver flowers; if humble daisies yield Of a clear river; gently drive the flock, sinks, The sturdy rustic, in the middle wave, THE STEAM ENGINE SCIENTIFICALLY CONSIDERED. sede. At length, however, toward the middle of the last century, the genius of Watt was turned to this problem, and those great inventions were made, the final result of which has been the creation of a power which has exercised a greater influence upon the condition of the human race, material, social, and intellectual, than was ever before recorded in the history of its progress. To enumerate the benefits which the HE surface of the globe has been in- application of steam has conferred upon at least would be to count fifty or sixty centuries. During that long period their intelligence has been as acute, their interests as exigent, and their craving for material good as insatiable as at present; yet a natural agent of vast power which existed around them, below them, and above them, whose play was incessant in the air, upon the earth, and in the waters under the earth, remained unobserved and undiscovered until the last century; its powers were imperfectly developed until late in the present century, and its still undeveloped consequences and effects, affecting the well-being and progress, physical, moral, and intellectual, of the whole human race, are such as the most acute and farsighted cannot foresee. This giant power is steam It was not until the commencement of the last century that any serious progress had been made toward the solution of the problem of the artificial application of steam. About that time engines were constructed, in which the elastic force of steam, as well as the force resulting from its re-conversion into water, was applied as a mechanical power. The engines first constructed were defective, their performance unsatisfactory, and the cost of their maintenance was greater than that of the power which they aspired to super and every luxury we enjoy, whether physical or intellectual, many of which it has created, and all of which it has augmented in an immense proportion. It has penetrated the crust of the earth, and drawn from beneath it boundless treasures of mineral wealth, which, without its aid, would have remained inaccessible; it has drawn up, in measureless quantity, the fuel on which its own life and activity depend; it has relieved men from many of their most slavish toils, and reduced their labor in a great degree to light and easy superintendence. sum of human happiness, not only by call It has increased the WHEEL OF HERO OF ALEXANDRIA. |