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ing to her greatness, and augments not her grandeur. She is great in ruin!—great in the glorious acheivments

of another age. Her power and influence among the kingdoms and principalities of the world, have long since passed away; and her sceptre has been broken.

But still, all nations must and do go there, to bend before the altar of genius, and to pay a willing homage to her treasures of art. There are the deathless tints, the immortal touches of Michael Angelo's gigantic hand; there too, are the divine and angelic impressions of Raphael; there but why should I attempt an enumeration of a thousand names, consecrated to genius, and hallowed by antiquity, whose glorious works so richly adorn the Eternal City! They are known to all, but not by all appreciated.

I looked down from the brink of the deep crater's mouth into the black and fiery bosom of Vesuvius, where the raging flames, old as time itself, have maddened into fury and awful storms of molten anger, burying fair cities deep beneath their glowing wrath! What a scene! I turned my eyes upon the fair blue waters, so sweetly spread at the base, like the smooth surface of a burnished shield, flashing back the rays of the sun in all the glory that he sends them.

It was a lovely day in spring, when the flowers were young and bursting into blossom, diffusing their perfumes over the gay, embellished, vine-clad hills. The bay of Naples then reposed in beauty; there was no breeze to curl its surface, and the warm sun smiled gently upon it. O! how bright the prospect over its blue expanse! The city, too, was glorious in the thin

blue ethereal vapor, lightly tinging the swelling domes and lofty spires of sunny Naples.

I came down from the mountain, and entered the buried cities of the plains. Pompeii and Herculaneum ! once gay cities-long buried beneath the red crackling fires of the volcano's wrath! How little do we know of those beings who once gaily trod the well-worn pavements of those silent streets! They have gone; and myriads before, too, have stepped into the awful crater of eternity! And those cities have slept beneath the black cinders of Vesuvius' fires for many centuries; and now they open their ponderous gates and sealed treasures to the world's astonished gaze!

LESSON VI.

ANCIENT ROME-POMPEII.-[CONCLUDED.]

AND lo, a voice from Italy! It comes like the stirring of the breeze upon the mountains! It floats in majesty like the echo of the thunder! It breathes solemnity like a sound from the tombs! Let the nations hearken; for the slumber of ages is broken, and the buried voice of antiquity speaks again from the gray ruins of Pompeii.

Roll back the tide of eighteen hundred years. At the foot of the vine-clad Vesuvius stands a royal city; the stately Roman walks its lordly streets, or banquets in the palaces of its splendor. The bustle of busied thousands is there, you may hear it along the thronged

quays; it rises from the amphitheatre and the forum. It is the home of luxury, of gaiety, and of joy. There togaed royalty drowns itself in dissipation, the lion roars over the martyred Christian, and the bleeding gladiator dies at the beck of applauding spectators. It is a careless, a dreaming, a devoted city.

There is a blackness in the horizon, and the earthquake is rioting in the bowels of the mountain !— Hark! a roar, a crash! and the very foundations of the eternal hills are belched forth in a sea of fire! Wo for that fated city! The torrent comes surging like the mad ocean,-it boils above wall and tower, palace and fountain, and Pompeii is a city of tombs!

Ages roll on. Silence, darkness and desolation are in the halls of buried granduer. The forum is voiceless, and the pompous mansions are tenanted by skeletons! Lo! other generations live above the dust of long lost glory, and the slumber of the dreamless city is forgotten.

Pompeii beholds a resurrection! As summoned by the blast of the first trumpet, she hath shaken from her beauty the ashes of centuries and once more looks forth upon the world, sullied and sombre, but interesting still. Again upon her arches, her courts and her collonades, the sun lingers in splendor, but not as erst when the reflected lustre from her marbles dazzled like the glory of his own true beam. There, in their gloomy boldness, stand her palaces, but the song of carousal is hushed forever. You may behold the places of her fountains, but you will hear no murmur-they are as the water courses of the desert. There too, are her gardens, but the barrenness of long antiquity is theirs.

You may stand in her amphitheatre, and you shall read utter desolation on its bare and dilapidated walls.

Pompeii! moldering relict of a former world!Strange redemption from the sepulchre! How vivid are the classic memories that cluster around thee! Thy loneliness is rife with tongues; for the shadows of the mighty are thy sojourners! Man walks thy desolated and forsaken streets, and is lost in his dreams of other days. He converses with the genius of the Past, and the Roman stands as freshly recalled as before the billow of lava had stiffened above him. A Pliny, a Sallust a Trajan are in his musing, and he visits their very homes.

Venerable and eternal city! The storied urn to a nation's memory! A disentombed and risen witness for the dead! Every stone of thee is consecrated and immortal. Rome was--Thebes was-Sparta was-thou wast, and art still. No Goth or Vandal thundered at thy gates or reveled in thy spoil. Man marred not thy magnificence. Thou wert scathed by the finger of Him, who alone knew the depths of thy violence and crime. Babylon of Italy! thy doom was not revealed to thee. No prophet was there, when thy towers were tottering and the ashen darkness obscured thy horizon, to construe the warning. The wrath of God was upon thee heavily; in the volcano was the "hiding of his power," and like thine ancient sisters of the plain, thy judgment was sealed in fire.

LESSON VII.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

ONE sees in Westminster Abbey almost as much as he would have seen had he lived in England for a thousand years. If a great person has died, or a great deed been done in this island for centuries, they have brought some memento and placed it within these walls. Here we read the story of the virtues and the crimes of England's great men; here we find their monuments, their escutcheons, and their ashes.

In different ages, and from different scenes of action, England's kings have come to these solemn cloisters at last, to forget in the deep slumber of the grave the troubles, the follies, and the guilt of the life just ended. No one of them, as he went to his sepulchre, stopped to listen to the clamors that swelled behind him; to the contentions of fierce and eager aspirants to his vacant throne.

Henry Seventh's chapel is called "the wonder of the world." It stands at the east end of the Abbey, and is so neatly joined to it that it seems to be part of the main edifice. It is adorned with sixteen Gothic towers, beautifully ornamented, and jutting from the building in different angles. It is built on the plan of a cathedral, with a nave and side-aisles. The entrance to this chapel is through curiously wrought, ponderous gates of brass. The lofty ceiling is worked into an astonishing variety of designs, and you may imagine my surprise when I was told that it was all wrought

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