[3] Frequent unexplained chances favor subsequent letters; indeed, the correspondence henceforth seems to proceed as easily as if the countries had been at peace.—TR.
[4] Discourse "On the duty of Children to their Parents," by M. Necker. See first note.**
[5] On Indulgence. The same.
[6] Lord Nevil does not inform us whether he entered the army before he visited France, or during his year's residence in Scotland, ere he returned thither. Between his father's death and his departure for Italy, he had surely as little time as health for the military duties even of a mess-table.—TR.
[BOOK XIII.]
VESUVIUS, AND THE CAMPAGNA OF NAPLES.
[CHAPTER I.]
Lord Nevil remained long exhausted after the trying recital which had thrilled him to the soul. Corinne gently strove to revive him. The river of flame which fell from Vesuvius fearfully excited his imagination. She availed herself of this, in order to draw him from his own recollections, and begged him to walk with her on the banks of once inflamed lava. The ground they crossed glowed beneath their steps, and seemed to warm them from a spot so hostile to all life. Man could not here call himself "lord of the creation;" it seemed escaping from his tyranny by suicide. The torrent of fire is of a dusky hue, yet when it lights a vine, or any other tree, it sends forth a clear bright blaze; but the lava itself is of that lurid tint, which might represent infernal fire; it rolls on with a crackling sound, that alarms the more from its slightness—cunning seems joined with strength; thus secretly steals the tiger to his prey. This cataract, though so deliberate, loses not a moment; if it encounter a high wall, or anything that opposes its progress, it heaps against the obstacle its black and bituminous flood, and buries it beneath burning waves. Its course is not so rapid but that men may fly before it; but like Time, it overtakes the old or the imprudent, who, from its silent approach, think to escape without exertion. Its brightness is such that earth is reflected in the sky, which appears lapped in perpetual lightning; this, too, is mirrored by the sea, and all nature clothed in their threefold fires. The wind is heard, and its effect perceived, as it forms a whirlpool of flame round the gulf whence the lava issues; one trembles to guess at what is passing in the bosom of the earth, whose fury shakes the ground beneath our steps. The rocks about the source of this flood are covered with pitch and sulphur, whose colors, indeed, might suit the home of fiends—a livid green, a tawny brown, and an ensanguined red, form just that dissonance to the eye of which the ear were sensible, if pierced by the harsh cries of witches, conjuring down the moon from heaven. All that is near the volcano bears so supernal an aspect, that doubtless the poets thence drew their portraitures of hell. There we may conceive how man was first persuaded that a power of evil existed to thwart the designs of Providence. Well may one ask, in such a scene, if mercy alone presides over the phenomena of creation; or if some hidden principle forces natures, like her sons, into ferocity? "Corinne," sighed Nevil, "is it not from hence that sorrow comes? Does the angel of death take wing from yon summit? If I beheld not thy heavenly face, I should lose all memory of the charms with which the Eternal has adorned the earth; yet this spectacle, frightful as it is, overawes me less than conscience. All perils may be braved; but how can the dead absolve us for the wrongs we did them living? Never, never. Ah, Corinne! what need of fires like these? The wheel that turns incessantly, the stream that tempts and flies, the stone that rolls back the more we would impel it on—these are but feeble images of that dread thought, the impossible, the irreparable!" A deep silence now reigned around Oswald and Corinne; their very guides were far behind; and near the crater naught was heard save the hissing of its fires; suddenly, however, one sound from the city reached even this region—the chime of bells, perhaps announcing a death, perhaps a birth, it mattered not—most welcome was it to our travellers. "Dear Oswald," said Corinne, "let us leave this desert, and return to the living world. Other mountains raise us above terrestrial life, and bring us nearer Heaven, but here nature seems treated as a criminal, and condemned no more to taste the beneficent breath of her Creator. This is no sojourn for the good—let us descend." An abundant shower fell as they sought the plain, threatening each instant to extinguish their torches: the Lazzaroni accompanied them with yells that might alarm any one who knew not that such was their constant custom. These men are sometimes agitated by a superfluity of life, with which they know not what to do, uniting equal degrees of violence and sloth. Their physiognomy, more marked, than their characters, seem to indicate a kind of vivacity in which neither mind nor heart are at all concerned. Oswald, uneasy lest the rain should hurt Corinne, and lest their lights should fail, was absorbed by this indefinite sense of her danger; and his tenderness by degrees restored that composure which had been disturbed by the confidence he had made to her. They regained their carriage at the foot of the mountain, and stopped not at the ruins of Herculaneum, which are, as it were, buried afresh beneath the buildings of Portici. They arrived at Naples near midnight, and Corinne promised Nevil, as they took leave, to give him the history of her life on the morrow.