"The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld with ineffable dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine tree; the trunk, blackness;—the branches, fire;—that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare!

"There was a dead, heart-sunken silence—through which there suddenly broke the roar of the lion, which, from within the building, was echoed back by the sharper and fiercer yells of its follow beasts. Dread seers were they of the burthen of the atmosphere, and wild prophets of the wrath to come!

"Then there rose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled; and beyond, in the distance, they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a torrent; at the same time, it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes, mixed with vast fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing vines,—over the desolate streets,—over the amphitheatre itself,—far and wide,—with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea,—fell that awful shower!

"No longer thought the crowd of justice or of Arbaces; safety for themselves was their sole thought. Each turned to fly—each dashing, pressing, crushing against the other. Trampling recklessly over the fallen,—amid groans, and oaths, and prayers, and sudden shrieks, the enormous crowd vomited itself forth through the numerous passages. Whither should they fly?"

Now let us present the description, given in 'The Last Night of Pompeii,' of the horrors that succeeded the scene of the games:

"Awed, yet untrembling, Pansa calm replied,
'Ye hear no thunder—but Destruction's howl!
Ye see no lightning—but the lava glare
Of desolation sweeping o'er your pride!
Death is beneath, around, above, within
All who exult to inflict it on my heart,
And ye must meet it, fly when, where ye will,
For in the madness of your cruelties
Ye have delayed till every hope is dead.
Let the doom come! our faiths will soon be tried.
Gigantic spectres from their shadowy thrones,
With ghastly smiles to welcome ye, arise.
The Pharaohs and Ptolemies uplift
Their glimmering sceptres o'er ye—bidding all
Bare their dark bosoms to the Omniscient God:
And every strange and horrid mythos waits
To fold ye in the terrors of its dreams.'"
"Like an earthshadowing cypress, o'er the skies
Lifting its labyrinth of leaves, the boughs
Of molten brass, the giant trunk of flame,
The breath of the volcano's Titan heart
Hung in the heavens; and every maddened pulse
Of the vast mountain's earthquake bosom hurled
Its vengeance on the earth that gasped beneath."
"From every cell shrieks burst; hyenas cried
Like lost child stricken in its loneliness:
The giant elephant with matchless strength
Struggled against the portal of his tomb,
And groaned and panted; and the leopard's yell
And tiger's growl with all surrounding cries
Of human horror mingled; and in air,
Spotting the lurid heavens and waiting prey,
The evil birds of carnage hung and watched."
"Vesuvius answered: from its pinnacles
Clouds of farflashing cinders, lava showers,
And seas drank up by the abyss of fire
To be hurled forth in boiling cataracts,
Like midnight mountains, wrapt in lightnings, fell."
"All awful sounds of heaven and earth met now;
Darkness behind the sungod's chariot rolled,
Shrouding destruction, save when volcan fires
Lifted the folds to gaze on agony;
And when a moment's terrible repose
Fell on the deep convulsions, all could hear
The toppling cliffs explode and crash below,
While multitudinous waters from the sea
In whirlpools through the channell'd mountain rocks
Rushed, and with hisses like the damned's speech,
Fell in the mighty furnace of the mount."
"Oh, then, the love of life! the struggling rush,
The crushing conflict of escape! few, brief,
And dire the words delirious fear spake now—
One thought, one action swayed the tossing crowd.
All through the vomitories madly sprung,
And mass on mass of trembling beings pressed,
Gasping and goading, with the savageness
That is the child of danger, like the waves
Charybdis from his jagged rocks throws down,
Mingled by fury—warring in their foam.
Some swooned and were trod down by legion feet;
Some cried for mercy to the unanswering gods;
Some shrieked for parted friends forever lost;
And some in passion's chaos, with the yells
Of desperation did blaspheme the heavens;
And some were still in utterness of woe.
Yet all toiled on in trembling waves of life
Along the subterranean corridors.
Moments were centuries of doubt and dread!
Each breathing obstacle a hated thing:
Each trampled wretch, a footstool to o'erlook
The foremost multitudes; and terror, now,
Begat in all a maniac ruthlessness,
For in the madness of their agonies
Strong men cast down the feeble who delayed
Their flight, and maidens on the stones were crushed," etc.

Let the reader compare each of these extracts with the other, and form his own opinion of Mr. Bulwer's great powers and originality. These very remarkable coincidences are followed by others not less extraordinary and worthy of commemoration:

"But suddenly a duller shade fell over the air. Instinctively he turned to the mountain, and behold! one of the two gigantic crests, into which the summit had been divided, rocked and wavered to and fro; and then, with a sound the mightiness of which no language can describe, it fell from the burning base, and rushed, an avalanche of fire, down the sides of the mountain! At the same instant gushed forth a volume of blackest smoke, rolling on, over air, sea, and earth."

"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 the molten lava. Darkly red through the profound gloom of their banks, they flowed slowly on, as towards 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."

Among the Death Cries of Pompeii, as we imagined them, is the following lyric: