he received on the spot. He then took off his clothes, and we walked some time on the edge of the abyss, in order to find a part which was less perpendicular, and more commodious for our descent. The guide discovered one, and gave the signal for me to accompany him.-We plunged down.

Fancy us at the bottom of the gulph.* I despair of describing the chaos, which surrounded me. Let the reader figure to himself a basin, a thousand feet in circumference, and three hundred high, which forms itself into the shape of a funnel. Its borders or interior walls are furrowed by the liquid fire, which this basin has contained, and vomited forth. The projecting parts of these walls resemble those brick pillars, with which the Romans supported their enormous masonry. Large rocks are hanging down in different parts, and their fragments mixed with cinders into a sort of paste, cover the bottom of the abyss.

* There is fatigue, but very little danger attendant on a descent into the crater of Vesuvius, unless the investigator should be surprised by a sudden eruption.

This bottom of the basin is ploughed and indented in various manners. Near the middle are three vents, or small mouths, recently opened, which discharged flames during the occupation of Naples by the French in 1798.

Smoke proceeds from different points of the crater, especially on the side towards la Torre del Greco. On the opposite side, towards Caseste, I perceived flame. When you plunge your hand into the cinders, you find them of a burning heat, several inches under the surface. The general colour of the gulph is black as coal; but Providence, as I have often observed, can impart grace at his pleasure even to objects the most horrible. The lava, in some places, is tinged with azure, ultra-marine, yellow, and orange. Rocks of granite are warped and twisted by the action of fire, and bent to their very extremities, so that they exhibit the sem blance of the leaves of palms and acanthus. The volcanic matter having cooled on the rocks over which it flowed, many figures are thus formed, such as roses, girandoles, and ribbons. The rocks likewise assume the forms of plants

and animals, and imitate the various figures, which are to be seen in agates. I particularly observed on a blueish rock, a white swan modelled in so perfect a manner that I could have almost sworn I beheld this beautiful bird sleeping on a placid lake, with its head bent under its wing, and its long neck stretched over its back like a roll of silk.

"Ad vada Meandri concinit albus olor."

I found here that perfect silence which I have, on other occasions, experienced at noon in the forests of America, when I have held my breath and heard nothing except the beating of my heart and temporal artery. It was only at intervals that gusts of wind, descending from the cone to the bottom of the crater, rustled through my clothes or whistled round my staff. I also heard some stones, which my guide kicked on one side, as he climbed through the cinders. A confused echo, similar to the jarring of metal or glass, prolonged the noise of the fall, and afterwards all was silent as death. Compare this gloomy silence with the dreadful thundering

din, which shakes these very places, when the volcano vomits fire from its entrails, and covers the earth with darkness.

A philosophical reflection may here be made, which excites our pity for the sad state of human affairs. What is it, in fact, but the famous revolutions of Empires, combined with the convulsions of nature, that changes the face of the earth and the ocean? A happy circumstance would it at least be, if men would not employ themselves in rendering each other miserable, during the short time that they are allowed to dwell together. Vesuvius has not once opened its abyss to swallow up cities, without its fury surprising mankind in the midst of blood and tears. What are the first signs of civilization and improved humanity, which have been found, during our days, under the lava of the volcano? Instruments of punishment and skeletons in chains! *

Times alter, and human destinies are liable

At Pompeia.

to the same inconstancy.

"Life," says a Greek

song,

" is like the wheels of a chariot."

Τροχὸς ἄρματος γὰρ οἷα

Βίοτος τρέχει κυλιθεις.

Pliny lost his life from a wish to contemplate, at a distance, the volcano, in the centre of which I was now tranquilly seated. I saw the abyss smoking round me. I reflected that a few fathoms below me was a gulph of fire.I reflected that the volcano night at once disgorge its entrails, and launch me into the air with all the rocky fragments by which I was surrounded.

What Providence conducted me hither ? By what chance did the tempests of the American ocean cast me on the plains of Lavinia ? "Lavinaque venit littora." I cannot refrain from returning to the agitations of this life, in which St. Augustine says that things are full of misery, and hope devoid of happiness. Rem plenam miseriæ, spem beatitudinis inanem. Born on the rocks of America, the first sound, which struck my ear on entering the world, was that