say twenty black-browed scoundrels to lead you within an inch of certain death. However, it was a part of the play, and along we trudged, over smoky ground and ashes, trembling and half suffocated with the fumes of sulphur, until we stood upon the brink of a visible hell. I hate swearing, but that is the only expressive word. With handkerchiefs to the noses, and eyes aghast, we looked down into the seething, smoking, blackened abyss! Here was the fountain itself of those molten streams of fire which covered the face of earth for leagues, and buried great cities! Our guides ventured upon the sides of the chasm, and rolling great rocks down, bid us list! Up, up, UP—comes the cracking, sepulchral noise. Sounding on its dim and perilous way," it still rises apparently from miles below-and when it would seem that even sound, were it ever so deep, could no longer be heard, the heart would burn fearfully to hear prolonged the noise-till it seemed to expire; 66 "Yet from the Abyss is caught again, And yet again recovered." If one were not so horrified, fancy might picture the Devil growling below in his deepest pits, as blow after blow of the rock cracked upon his infidel head. As we looked down amidst the curling vapor, and heard the hollow sound, and inhaled the sulphurous smoke, and looked on either side at the immense gorges now emptied of their fires, we felt that for the first time, we were amid the perfection and sublimity of horror! A few steps either way, and it is certain destruction. The ground is hot. You may turn over its smoking ashes with your cane. The guide lit a torch at the fire. But even here, can we not look upward into the deep, calm heaven, with its high and vaulted boss of stars, interpenetrated with the relict lustre of the departed day? Cannot we see from this pinnacle of Dread, the beauty of that great law of Being, which is quaintly described by an old English Bard, as A great gold chain ylinked well, Whose upper end to highest heaven was knitt, And cannot imagination people the "deep amaze" of the starry vault with its creations of angelic beauty, winnowing the air around, and brooding over the orange groves and vineyards below; as well as the horrid mystery of Deepness and Death into which we gaze, with those ghastly and horrid phantoms, described by the Latin poet, whose tomb we are about to visit, and whose verse we have prefixed to this chapter of contrasts. With torches bright, and hearts relieved, we took giant strides down the mountain at an angle of fifty degrees, and from a height 4,000 feet above the bay. It was tall walkingthat promenade. The space which absorbed an hour of ascent was performed downward in ten minutes. Again with horse and carriage, and moonlight, we descended into the city, whose lights in crescent beauty twinkled far, far below, displaying her as the bride of the Mediterranean recumbent and asleep,-her forehead gleaming with a coronet of gems. Soon we find as sweet a sleep as ever laborer felt. One of the biggest piledrivers on the public improvements could not have wedged a dream into that solid sleep. I was sure in the morning, from my eyelids, that Somnus himself had been sitting on them all night. I would not perform the same operation for the reader; so I close for another theme. XII. Laples, Its Gayety and Desalation. Audire et videor pios Errare per lucos, amaenae Quos et aquae subeunt et aurae. HORACE. A WEEK'S stay seems but a slight taste of this Paradise. Nevertheless, the time of our visit has proved fortunate.— What we regretted to miss at Rome, and for which great preparations were making when we left, we have seen here. The festal of Corpus Domini is always a great gala among Italians. As we drove to Vesuvius on the first day of our arrival, our eye was attracted, at every few squares of this illimitable city, by high altars, resembling the pagodas we saw at the World's Exhibition. They consist of rough framework, surrounded by cloth of gold, gems and spangles, great stars and red tinselling. They look like large political platforms, done up in gaudy dress. Preparations were being made to illuminate the city. Lanterns of divers colors hung from garlands of green about the altars, across streets and at every door. Artificial fountains there were too, around which flowers were wreathed and paintings placed. As we returned from Pompeii, which we visited day before yesterday, we saw the illumination and the people. A gush of hilarity seemed to run all through Naples. These children of the sun,-how they do revel in pleasure upon such days as this! They save throughout the year, to eat their choicest maccaroni upon Corpus Domini. Crowds were collected about the altars listening to music. Crowds about the eating and lemonade stalls, singing and hallooing. Crowds lined the way, laughing,—as if Herculaneum were not beneath—a corpse, Ha! Ha! Ho! in genu nor Pompeii laid bare in desolation. ine fun—a language which needs no dragoman to interpret— roared around, as lantern flashed against jewelled altar, and reflected its brightness in the joyous mass. Curriculi loaded full of picturesque people, drive by-all jovial. Donkeys are piled from head to tail with human nature, the children being in baskets upon their backs, as the sketch represents them. We descended from our carriage to mingle with the mass. On every side is carelessness and mirth, and that without drunkenness. Indeed, I have seen but one drunken man, and he was a soldier, since I left England; and that although wine bleeds fresh and free from every hill-side and mountain-top. Yesterday the procession came off. Priests by the hundreds officiated. The host was elevated. The people were blessed from the altars. All shops were closed. Naples was high in her festivity. The meanest lazzarone that ever begged or stole, joined in the general joy, and forgot his condition in the glee. In one of the churches, nuns were seen peeping through the bars, and solemn priests marched around and amidst the crowded aisle. By the way, let me tell you of a singular vegetable phenomenon which our party saw in the cloistered court of the church of St. Severino. It was a fig-tree of large size growing out of the hollow of a great oak, and bearing three different kinds of figs. Vegetable wonders, however, are as common here as the leaves upon the sides of Vesuvius. During a drive yesterday to the tomb of Virgil, we had a fine view of great fields recovered from the sea, by the labor of peasants and the money of the king, and which are covered with vineyards as far as the eye can reach, and interspersed with white houses of rare beauty. Our visit to Pompeii will never be forgotten. Who can see and forget those long streets deserted and dead; those temples broken and robbed of their gods; those rooms with their red and yellow paintings; and those gardens with their fountains and statues, their mosaics and pillars-all, all speaking the great tragedy which primevally was here enacted. The forums. are standing just as they stood when the lake of fire was poured upon the devoted city. The temples and their altars-strange illustrations of former worship-stand side by side with the baker shops and taverns. Barber shops and theatres, baths and tombs, are here-an unwritten history, a book of marvels, which the fire of the mountain has bound with its clasps of stone, to be pondered eighteen hundred years after by a wondering world. The ride to this city of fire lies along the shore of the bay. The Apennines bound the vision upon the east; and between them and Naples lies the volcanic fountain. The city of Pompeii is upon the other side of the mountain, occupying a great plain. It was discovered in 1750 by peasants working in a vineyard. About one-third of it is uncovered; enough to show that the arts of painting, sculpture and poetry flourished greatly in the midst of as luxurious and wicked a people as ever were permitted to fester under heaven. What I saw has never been written, what I saw is evidence more than enough, even to a sense of disgust, of the deepest stains of sin, and the deepest depths of degeneracy. Sodom and Gomorrah were no doubt rank with iniquity. Pompeii, it seems to me, met with a similar fate for similar profligacy and corruption. No one (unless it be ladies, to whom such sights are not permitted) can go through these streets, look at the signs, examine the paintings and statues, without feeling that God took upon himself the office of Avenger, and used that mountain of lava as the instru ment. We entered upon our researches just outside the walls of Pompeii near some stables and tombs. The inscriptions tell, in very plain Latin, the story of the dead. We examined wells, the stones of which are worn with ropes, as if just used yesterday. Similar appearances along the curbing of the city, indicate places for hitching horses. Ovens like our own, in which bread was found rather well done, and which we saw to-day at |