him, while he was involved in a shower of small pumice stones and ashes, and in a cloud of smoke. The force of the explosions was so great, that doors and windows were thrown open by them at the distance of several miles: the stream of lava was in some places two miles broad, and 60 or 70 feet deep; it extended about six miles from the summit of the mountain, and remained hot for several weeks. In 1794 a still more violent eruption occurred: it was expected by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, the crater being nearly filled, and the water in the wells having subsided. Showers of immense stones were projected to a great height; and ashes were thrown out so copiously, that they were very thick at Taranto, 250 miles off; some of them also were wet with salt water.. A heavy noxious vapour, supposed to be carbonic acid, issued in many places from the earth, and destroyed the vineyards in which it was suffered to remain stagnant. A part of the town of Torre del Greco was overwhelmed by a stream of lava, which ran through it into the sea; yet nothwithstanding the frequency of such accidents, the inhabitants had so strong a predilection for their native spot, that they refused the offer of a safer situation for rebuilding their houses.

[Editor. Young, Nat. Phil. Della Torre, Istoria del Vesuvio.]

CHAP. IX.

ERUPTIONS OF VESUVIUS.

THERE is no volcanic mountain in Europe, whose desolating paroxysms have been so fatally experienced, and so accurately transmitted to us, as those of Vesuvius.

This mountain is well known to constitute one of the natural wonders of the kingdom of Naples. Like Parnassus, it has been said to consist of two summits, one of which, situated in a westward direction, is called by the natives Somma; and the other, running in a southern line, Proper Vesuvius, or Vesuvio; and it is this last alone which emits fire and smoke. The two hills or summits are separated by a valley of about a mile in length, and peculiarly fertile

INTERIOR VIEW OF THE CRATER OF MOUNT VESUVIUS
As it was before the great Eruption of 1767.

London, Bublished by R. Wilks Ag Chancery Lane, Jan.1.1813.

See Gal.of Nat. Art.Part I.Book II.

in its productions. The eruptions of this mountain have been numerous in almost every age of the Christian æra; and on many occasions prodigiously destructive. From the numerous narrations to which they have given rise, we shall confine ourselves to those that are most awful or interesting.

SECT. I.-Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

THE earliest and one of the most fatal eruptions of Vesuvius that occurs to us in history, took place in the year 79 of the Christian æra, and the first of the reign of Titus. All Campania was alarmed by its violence, and the country was devastated in every direction to a very great distance; numerous towns with the whole of their inhabitants were consumed, and among the rest, the elegant cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the ruins of which, after having been utterly overwhelmed and lost for more than sixteen centuries, were at length traced out by accident; and, so far as they relate to the latter, have been explored to a considerable extent. The wreck of Herculaneum was discovered in 1739, and was rendered accessible by a well in the course of the ensuing year.

Pompeii had suffered severely from an earthquake, sixteen years before the eruption of 79, but had been rebuilt and embellished with several stately edifices; especially with a magnificent theatre, in which the people were assembled, and intent upon the spectacle, when this tremendous visitation burst upon them, swallowing up the city by an earthquake, and overcovering its site to a considerable depth with the fiery materials that were thrown forth from the mouth of the crater. The cities of Puteoli and Cume were also greatly damaged, partly by the concussions, and partly by the burning ashes, which last, according to the concurrent assertion of ancient historians, extended to Africa, Egypt and Syria, and at Rome turned the day suddenly into night, to the consternation of the inhabitants. It was during this eruption, that the elder Pliny fell a victim to suffocation, the poet Cesius Bassus and his household were consumed by the flames, and Agrippa, son of Claudius Felix, the well-known governor of Judæa, and of Drusilla, daughter to Agrippa, the last king of the Jews, perished in his youth as we are told by Josephus; though the passage of this writer in which he refers for a more particular account of his death, is no longer extant.

The earliest of the eruptions of Vesuvius of which we have any narrative, is so exquisitely and impressively related by the younger Pliny, in two letters to his friend Tacitus the historian, that it has been rendered almost as celebrated, from this fine and touching description, as on account of the extent of the calamity itself. But though this description is the earliest, we are not to conclude that no eruption had ever taken place antecedently. Neither Pliny nor Tacitus hint at any thing to this effect, nor express the smallest surprise at the phænomenon, which they undoubtedly would have done, had it been the first of the kind. One of the earliest we meet with in history, next to that narrated by Pliny, is comparatively in our own times; it occurred in 1538, and formed the crater near Pozzicoli, which has received the name of Monte Nuovo. Curiosity led many persons to look into this crater a few days after the eruption had ceased, when twenty of the rashest and most daring were destroyed by a sudden explosion of smoke, stones, and ashes. The next of which we have any document, took place in 1631, and is described by Antonio Santorelli, as also by the Abbate Braccini: during which the sea, as in the eruption of 79, retreated from the coast. The next memorable eruption in the order of time, is that described by Valetta in 1707: since which period, accounts of not fewer than ten others have been published in the Philosophical Transactions, for nearly half of which the world is greatly indebted to the assiduity and intrepidity of Sir William Hamilton. Besides these, we have also an account of an eruption in 1717, by bishop Berkeley, and of another in 1737 by Dr. Serao, published the same year at Naples.

The description of Pliny is as follows; and the two letters that contain it are numbered sixteen and twenty in the sixth book of his epistolary collection.

"TO TACITUS.

"YOUR request that I would send you an account of my uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments; for if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory of it I am well assured will be rendered for ever illustrious. And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune, which, as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country in ruins, and destroyed so many populous cities, seems to promise him