Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher

by Sir Humphry Davy

purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening into the brightest and purest azure; the distant mountains still retain a part of the snows of winter, but they are rapidly melting and they absolutely seem to melt reflecting the beams of the setting sun, glowing as if on fire. And man appears emulous of Nature, for the city below is full of activity; the nearest part of the bay is covered with boats, busy multitudes crowd the strand, and at the same time may be seen a number of the arts belonging to civilised society in operation—house-building, ship-building, rope-making, the manipulations of the smith and of the agriculturist, and not only the useful arts, but even the amusements and luxuries of a great metropolis may be witnessed from the spot in which we stand; that motley crowd is collected round a policinello, and those smaller groups that surround the stalls are employed in enjoying the favourite food and drink of the lazzaroni.

Ambrosio.—We see not only the power and activity of man, as existing at present, and of which the highest example may be represented by the steam-boat which is now departing for Palermo, but we may likewise view scenes which carry us into the very bosom of antiquity, and, as it were, make us live with the generations of past ages. Those small square buildings, scarcely visible in the distance, are the tombs of distinguished men amongst the early Greek colonists of the country; and those rows of houses, without roofs, which appear as if newly erecting, constitute a Roman town restored from its ashes, that remained for centuries as if it had been swept from the face of the

earth. When you study it in detail you will hardly avoid the illusion that it is a rising city; you will almost be tempted to ask where are the workmen, so perfect art the walls of the houses, so bright and uninjured the painting upon them. Hardly anything is wanting to make this scene a magnificent epitome of all that is most worthy of admiration in Nature and art; had there been in addition to the other objects a fine river and a waterfall the epitome would, I think, have been absolutely perfect.

Phil.—You are most unreasonable in imagining additions to a scene which it is impossible to embrace in one view, and which presents so many objects to the senses, the memory, and to the imagination; yet there is a river in the valley between Naples and Castel del Mare; you may see its silver thread and the white foam of its torrents in the distance, and if you were geologists you would find a number of sources of interest, which have not been mentioned, in the scenery surrounding us. Somma which is before us, for instance, affords a wonderful example of a mountain formed of marine deposits, and which has been raised by subterraneous fire, and those large and singular veins which you see at the base and rising through the substance of the strata are composed of volcanic porphyry, and offer a most striking and beautiful example of the generation and structure of rocks and mineral formations.

Onuphrio.—As we passed through Portici, on the road to the base of Vesuvius, it appeared to me that I saw a stone which had an ancient Roman inscription upon it, and which occupied the place of a portal in the modern palace of the Barberini.

Phil.—This is not an uncommon circumstance: Most of the stones used in the palaces of Portici had been employed more than two thousand years before in structures raised by the ancient Romans or Greek colonists; and it is not a little remarkable that the buildings of Herculaneum, a town covered with ashes, tufa, and lava, from the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius more than seventeen hundred years ago, should have been constructed of volcanic materials produced by some antecedent igneous action of the mountain in times beyond the reach of history; and it is still more remarkable that men should have gone on for so many ages making erections in spots where their works have been so often destroyed, inattentive to the voice of time or the warnings of nature.

Onu.—This last fact recalls to my recollection an idea which Philalethes started in the remarkable dream which he would have us believe occurred to him in the Colosæum, namely—that no important facts which can be useful to society are ever lost; and that, like these stones, which though covered with ashes or hidden amongst ruins, they are sure to be brought forward again and made use of in some new form.

Amb.—I do not see the justness of the analogy to which Onuphrio refers; but there are many parts of that vision on which I should wish to hear the explanations of Philalethes. I consider it in fact as a sort of poetical epitome of his philosophical opinions, and I regard this vision or dream as a mere web of his imagination in which he intended to catch us, his summer-flies and travelling companions.

Phil.—There, Ambrosio, you do me wrong. I will acknowledge, if you please, that the vision in the

Colosæum is a fiction; but the most important parts of it really occurred to me in sleep, particularly that in which I seemed to leave the earth and launch into the infinity of space under the guidance of a tutelary genius. And the origin and progress of civil society form likewise parts of another dream which I had many years ago, and it was in the reverie which happened when you quitted me in the Colosæum that I wove all these thoughts together, and gave them the form in which I narrated them to you.