Suddenly all became lighted with an intense and lurid glow. Bright and gigantic through the darkness, which closed around it like the walls of hell, the mountain shone—a pile of fire! Its summit seemed riven in two; or rather, above its surface there seemed to rise two monster shapes, each confronting each, as demons contending for a world. These were of one deep blood-red hue of fire, which lighted up the whole atmosphere far and wide; but below, the nether part of the mountain was still dark and shrouded, save in three places, adown which flowed, serpentine and irregular, rivers of molten lava. Darkly red through the profound gloom of their banks they flowed slowly on, as toward the devoted city. Over the broadest there seemed to spring a cragged and stupendous arch, from which, as from the jaws of hell, gushed the sources of the sudden Phlegethon. And through the still air was heard the rattling of the fragments of rock, hurtling one upon another as they were borne down the fiery cataracts—darkening, for one instant, the spot where they fell, and suffused the next, in the burnished hues of the flood in which they floated!
Nearly seventeen centuries had rolled away when the city of Pompeii was disinterred from its silent tomb,[45] all vivid with undimmed hues; its walls fresh as if painted yesterday—not a hue faded on the rich mosaic of its floors—in its forum the half-finished columns as left by the workman's hand—in its gardens the sacrificial tripod—in its halls the chest of treasure—in its baths the strigil—in its theatres the counter of admission—in its saloons the furniture and the lamp—in its triclinia the fragments of the last feast—in its cubicula the perfumes and the rouge of faded beauty—and everywhere the bones and skeletons of those who once moved the springs of that minute yet gorgeous machine of luxury and of life!
In the house of Diomed, in the subterranean vaults, twenty skeletons (one of a babe) were discovered in one spot by the door, covered by a fine ashen dust, that had evidently been wafted slowly through the apertures, until it had filled the whole space. There were jewels and coins, candelabra for unavailing light, and wine hardened in the amphoræ for the prolongation of agonized life. The sand, consolidated by damps, had taken the forms of the skeletons as in a cast; and the traveller may yet see the impression of a female neck and bosom of young and round proportions. It seems to the inquirer as if the air had been gradually changed into a sulphurous vapor; the inmates of the vaults had rushed to the door, to find it closed and blocked up by the scoria without, and, in their attempts to force it, had been suffocated with the atmosphere.
In the garden was found a skeleton with a key by its bony hand, and near it a bag of coins. This is believed to have been the master of the house, who had probably sought to escape by the garden, and been destroyed either by the vapors or some fragment of stone. Beside some silver vases lay another skeleton, probably that of a slave.
Various theories as to the exact mode by which Pompeii was destroyed have been invented by the ingenious; I have adopted that which is the most generally received, and which, upon inspecting the strata, appears the only one admissible by common sense; namely, a destruction by showers of ashes and boiling water, mingled with frequent irruptions of large stones, and aided by partial convulsions of the earth. Herculaneum, on the contrary, appears to have received not only the showers of ashes, but also inundations from molten lava; and the streams referred to must be considered as destined for that city rather than for Pompeii. Volcanic lightnings were evidently among the engines of ruin at Pompeii. Papyrus, and other of the more inflammable materials, are found in a burned state. Some substances in metal are partially melted; and a bronze statue is completely shivered, as by lightning. Upon the whole—excepting only the inevitable poetic license of shortening the time which the destruction occupied—I believe my description of that awful event is very little assisted by invention, and will be found not the less accurate for its appearance in a romance.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The Romans used to lie or walk naked in the sun, after anointing their bodies with oil, which was esteemed as greatly contributing to health, and therefore daily practised by them. This custom, however, of anointing themselves, is inveighed against by the satirists as in the number of their luxurious indulgences; but since we find the elder Pliny here, and the amiable Spurinna in a former letter, practising this method, we cannot suppose the thing itself was esteemed unmanly, but only when it was attended with some particular circumstances of an over-refined delicacy.
[42] About six miles distant from Naples.
[43] An island near Naples, now called Capri.