[The assembly in the amphitheatre and the various contests are next described.] LYDON, the gladiator, now rose to pursue his way homeward. Before him, how serenely slept the starlight on that lovely city! how breathlessly its pillared streets reposed in their security! how softly rippled the darkgreen waves beyond! how cloudless spread, aloft and blue, the dreaming Campanian skies! Yet this was the last night for the gay Pompeii! the colony of the hoar Chaldean! the fabled city of Hercules! the delight of the voluptuous Roman! Age after age had rolled, indestructive, unheeded, over its head; and now the last ray quivered on the dial plate of its doom! The gladiator heard some light steps behind a group of females were wending homewards from their visit to the amphitheatre. As he turned, his eye was arrested by a sudden apparition. From the summit of Vesuvius, darkly visible at the distance, there shot a pale, meteoric, livid light-it trembled an instant, and was gone. . . . The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld, with ineffable dismay, a vast vapour shooting from the summit of Vesuvius, in the form of a gigantic pine-tree; the trunk, blackness; the branches, fire;-a 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! Then There was a dead, heart-sunken silence. there arose 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! Meanwhile the streets were already thinned; the crowd had hastened to disperse itself under shelter; the ashes began to fill up the lower parts of the town; but, here and there, you heard the steps of fugitives crunching them warily, or saw their pale and haggard faces by the blue glare of the lightning, or the more unsteady glare of torches, by which they endeavoured to steer their steps. But ever and anon, the boiling water, or the straggling ashes, mysterious and gusty winds, rising and dying in a breath, extinguished these wandering lights, and with them the last living hope of those who bore them. . . In proportion as the blackness gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky-now of a livid and snake-like green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent-now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the whole city from arch to arch,-then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of their own life! In the pauses of the showers you heard the rumbling of the earth beneath, and the groaning waves of the tortured sea; or, lower still, and audible but to the watch of intensest fear, the grinding and hissing murmur of the escaping gases through the chasms of the distant mountain. Sometimes the cloud appeared to break from its solid mass, and, by the lightning, to assume quaint and vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes, striding across the gloom, hustling one upon the other, and vanishing swiftly into the turbulent abyss of shade-so that, to the eyes and fancies of the affrighted wanderers, the unsubstantial vapours were as the bodily forms of gigantic foes, the agents of terror and of death. The ashes in many places were already knee-deep; and the boiling showers which came from the steaming breath of the volcano forced their way into the houses, bearing with them a strong and suffocating vapour. In some places, immense fragments of rocks, hurled upon the house roofs, bore down along the streets masses. of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt-the footing seemed to slide and creep,-nor could chariot or litter be kept steady, even on the most level ground. . . Frequently, by the momentary light of the torches that had been set up here and there in the more public places, parties of fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying towards the sea, others flying from the sea back to the land-for the ocean had retreated rapidly from the shore, an utter darkness lay over it, and, upon its tossing and groaning waves the storm of cinders and rock fell, without the protection which the streets and roofs afforded to the land. Wild, haggard, ghastly with supernatural fears, these groups encountered each other, but without the leisure to speak, to coǹsult, to advise; for the showers fell now frequently, though not continuously, extinguishing the lights, which showed to each band the death-like faces of the other, and hurrying all to seek refuge beneath the nearest shelter. The whole elements of civilisation were broken up. Ever and anon, by the flickering lights, you saw the thief hastening by the most solemn authorities of the law, laden with, and peacefully chuckling over, the produce of his sudden gains. If, in the darkness, wife was separated from husband, or parent from child, vain was the hope of reunion. Each hurried blindly and confusedly on. Nothing in all the various and complicated machinery of social life was left, save the primal law of self-preservation!. Bright and gigantic through the darkness, which closed around, 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 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. And through the stilled air was heard the rattling of the fragments of rock, hustling one upon another, as they were borne down the fiery cataracts, darkening, for an instant, the spot where they fell, and diffused, the next, in the burnished hues of the flood along which they floated! The ground shook with a convulsion that cast all around upon its surface. A simultaneous crash resounded through the city, as down toppled many a roof and pillar!—the lightning, as if caught by the metal, lingered an instant on the imperial statue-then shivered bronze and column Down fell the ruin, echoing along the street, and riving the solid pavement where it crashed! The prophecy of the stars was fulfilled. LYTTON. THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE. NOT a drum was heard, not a funeral note, |