A rocky headland farther up the shore, Dashed back the huge waves with a sullen roar, Still, on the polished strand the surf beat time, And still each crested wave that washed up to my feet, I picked a piece of drift-wood from the beach, I cast it at my feet: one moment it was there — The next, I strained my anxious eyes to see it — where? It rose a moment then was lost to me! So, on the shore of Time's broad sea I stand, And watch the rising tide upon the strand, I yield, rebelling, to this despot's sway. And then, O GOD! THY mighty hand some hour And cast me like the drift-wood fragment at THY feet. Bear me far out upon the open sea, Onward, still onward 'neath the stormy tide, FATHER-THY hand my devious way shall guide Or I may slumber through whole ages in the deep: But some morn I shall wake from my oblivious sleep: O restless Soul! shall sinful doubt remain ? OMNISCIENCE Saith it-'I shall rise again!' J. E. E. THE CITY OF SUDDEN DEATH. MANY years ago there trod the lonely streets of Pompeii, with feeble step and slow, a gray-haired man. Physical suffering and mental toil had passed their plough-shares over that noble brow with a subsoil pressure. The mind within, which like a lamp in a vase of alabaster, had once illumined that fine old face, was burning dimly now, or only flickered up with a sort of supernatural light, as dying lamps will just before they are extinguished. The powers that had so long delighted the world, recalling past ages and manners with such vividness that men believed he had found the enchanter's wand of the great wizard of his house, were now all gone. But as that old man paced mournfully through the deserted streets, and by the hearth-stones cold and cheerless of that exhumed city, his head fell upon his noble chest, and he murmured, 'Take me away from this; 't is the city of the dead, the city of the dead;' then wept like a child. Volumes might be written on Pompeii, and yet they would only realize and carry out this brief but comprehensive summary, this profound impression which Pompeii left upon the mind of the 'Great Wizard of the North.' But there is nothing dark or noisome about this city of the dead.' It is only sad, because without inhabitant, and from the recollection of the terrible fate that so suddenly overwhelmed it. It still all looks bright, fresh and beautiful. The gay paintings on the walls, the marble fountains which seem about to play, with their inlaid basins of the rich and various-colored sea-shell, its atriums with their beautiful mosaic pavements, its classic peristyles, its cubiculas or alcoves for sleeping, its vestibules with their hospitable 'welcome' inlaid in mosaic upon the threshold - all are there just almost as they looked when the bright blue sky of nearly two thousand years ago was smiling above their owners, unconscious of the catastrophe that was impending over them. There is so little of ruin or desolation in the ordinary sense of the term. Even the very tombs along that famous street that leads out of the Herculaneum gate would hardly look mournful did we not feel that the pious crowds who once daily issued from that gate would never more return to scatter chaplets and flowers on the last resting-place of those they loved on earth: and yet, in spite of all this, a deep feeling of melancholy will steal over you, and you can partially comprehend the emotions of the great poet and novelist, as you proceed through lonely and noiseless streets, and enter mansion after mansion alike tenantless and deserted. Where are the crowds that once thronged, or the owners that once possessed them? At first you almost hesitate to enter uninvited, and every moment ex VOL. LVI. 3 pect some member of the family to come forth and rebuke the intrusion. But vain is the thought; you pass from house to house; VACANT each chamber, Quiet oblivion reigns over all.' You search the empty chambers, but no footfall is heard on the echoing pavement save your own and that of your companions. No voice responds to yours but the voice of those who are at your side. You pause and meditate. Sir Walter Scott's commentary is on your lips: 'Tis the city of the dead! the city of the dead!' Pompeii was a little Greek town of tolerable commerce in its early day. The Mediterranean Sea which once washed its walls, subsequently, from the effects of an earthquake or some local convulsion, left it a mile and more away, in the midst of one of those delicious plains made by nature for the complete extinguishment of all industry in the Italian dweller, and for the common-places of poetry and prose in all the northern abusers of the pen. It was ravaged by every barbarian who in turn was called a conqueror; and was successively the pillage of Carthaginian and Roman, until at last the Augustan age, that cast such radiance over Rome, saw it quieted into an effeminate and luxurious Roman colony, and man fearing to rob, ceased to rob any more. When man had ceased his molestations, then nature commenced hers, and the unfortunate little city was by a curious fate to be extinguished, yet preserved to perish suddenly from the face of the astonished Roman empire, and live again when Rome was but a nest of sandaled monks and superstitious mummery: and her eastern empire torn into fragments by Turk, Russian, Austrian and Prussian, and a whole host of barbaric names that once were as dust beneath her proud foot. In the year 63 of the Christian era, an earthquake first manifested to the affrighted Pompeians upon what a frail tenure they all held their leases. Whole streets were thrown down, columns started from their bases, statues fell from their pedestals, and to this day the curious traveller is shown the evidences of hasty repair, marking this first calamity. It was the first warning to that depraved and dissolute city, of the bolt red with uncommon wrath, soon to be launched with all its force amid a fiery whirlwind of stones, lava and ashes. On the twenty third of August, in the year 79, Vesuvius poured out his accumulation of terrors at once; and in the clearing away of the storm of fiery dust which covered Campania for four days, Pompeii with all its living multitude, its magnificent temples, theatres, palaces and baths; its walls of arabesque, and columns clustering in patrician splendor, had disappeared from the earth's surface, and a smoking heap reared itself like a grave-mound over the buried city. The ancient Romans appear to have been as fond of villas as if every soul of them had made fortunes in Wall-street, and the whole southern coast of Italy, like Staten-Island, although far surpassing it in architectural magnificence, was studded with the summer-palaces and iris-hued gardens of these masters of the world. The site of Vesuvius would now be rather a formidable foundation for a villa, whose owner might at any moment be found with his villa done to a turn in a bed of hot ashes. But before this eruption that covered Pompeii with ashes, and Herculaneum with lava, the mountain was asleep, and had never within the memory of the oldest inhabitant rumbled or flung up spark or stone. Its verdant slopes were then covered with elegant villas and gardens. Martial has a pretty epigram in which he gives us a view of Vesuvius as it appeared before this terrible eruption. He says: 'HERE verdant vines o'erspread Vesuvius' sides, The generous grape here poured her purple tides. To those who look upon Vesuvius now, grim, blasted, and lifting up his sooty forehead among clouds of perpetual smoke, the very throne of Pluto and Vulcan together, no force of fancy can picture what it must have been when the Romans built their summer-palaces and pavilions on its verdant slopes; a pyramid three thousand feet from base to apex, painted all over with forest, garden, vineyard and orchard; zoned with colonnades, turrets, golden roofs and marble porticoes; with the deep azure of the Campanian sky for a canopy; the classic Mediterranean washing its base; and the whole glittering in the colors of sunrise, noon and evening, like 'the rich and highpiled woof of Persia's looms,' let down from the steps of some heavenlifted and resplendent throne. All this magnificence was turned into cinders, lava, and hot water, in the year of the Christian era 79. The hissing streams of lava like fiery snakes ran hither and thither down the slopes of the mountain, scorching and consuming every thing in their glowing pathway; while the mountain hurled high in air the red-hot lava and the sulphurous ashes with a noise that shook the very firmament. The entire continent throughout its northern and southern range, felt the vigorous awakening of the volcano. Imperial Rome, hundreds of miles away, was covered with the ashes, of which Northern Africa, Egypt, and Asia Minor received their full share. The sun was turned into blood, and people very naturally thought that the end of the world had come. Well might Pliny the younger say, in his graphic letter to Tacitus: 'Nothing then was heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the cries of men. Some calling for their children, others for their husbands, and only distinguishing each other by their voices. One lamenting his own fate, another that of his family; some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy the gods and the world together.' At the close of this first fearful eruption, Vesuvius loomed forth the grim-looking giant he is at this hour. The sky was stained with that white cloud which still reposes like a halo round the mountain's scarred and shattered brow. The plain at his foot, where Herculaneum and Pompeii had once shone forth in all their beauty, was covered many feet deep with a débris of ashes and lava, 'while the smoke of the city went up as the smoke of a furnace.' All was at an end with the once busy, bustling cities below. The people were destroyed or scattered, their houses and homes buried many feet deep. Robbers and malaria remained the sole tenants of this desolate spot, and in this way many centuries rolled over the bones and houses of the vintners, sailors and snug citizens of these Vesuvian cities. But their time was to come, and the covering under. which they had reposed so long was to be perforated by Neapolitan and French picks, their private haunts and public places visited by curiosity-mongers, and sketched, lectured and written about, until two-thirds of the world wished they had never been disturbed. The first discovery of the buried cities was purely accidental; for no Neapolitan ever struck spade into the ground on purpose, or in real earnest, or ever harbored a voluntary idea about any thing save macaroni, intrigue, monkeys, hand-organs, and the gaming-table. The Neapolitan spade thus feeling its way into the earth, struck upon a key. The key was found to fit the lock of a door, and on the inside. was an inscription which first revealed the names of the buried cities. But notwithstanding this discovery, the cities slumbered for twenty years more; until about the year 1711, a duke digging for marbles to burn in a mortar, with which to make lime, found a statue of Hercules, a perfect heap of fractured beauties, a row of Greek columns, and a small temple. Again the cities slumbered, when in 1738 a king of Naples, 'upon whom light may the earth rest,' commenced digging in real earnest, and Pompeii with its temples and theatres once more lay open to the sun. So few details of the original catastrophe are to be found in history, that we can scarcely estimate the amount of real suffering, which is, after all, the only thing in the case to be taken into the consideration, in considering it a misfortune. The population of Pompeii at least, and perhaps of Herculaneum, with some few exceptions, had time to make |