'till then. Pale and wasted it was, but calm withal, and calm with unearthly peacefulness. Grief had long wasted every feature, but while the marks of her reign were still remaining, grief herself had passed away for ever, and hope sat with heavenly smiles in her place. Charles the First, for whose could that countenance be but his, turned to the bishop, and appeared to speak with him; Alice thought that she could hear the sound of his voice in the profound stillness. She stretched forward her head, and followed with her looks, and almost with her gestures, every movement of the King. He took off his cloak, and delivered his collar with the George to the bishop. Again he seemed to speak, and then kneeled down; but ere he laid his head upon the block he lifted up his clasped hands, and raising his face as if in earnest prayer towards heaven, a look of adoring rapture lighted up his whole countenance. Then all calmly, he laid down his head, and gave himself the signal for his death.-The axe fell, and when it had fallen, a shriek, a yell of horror scarcely human, burst like one voice from the whole crowd.-Spouting, and streaming with gore, as if its former expression had been at once forcibly driven from it, the severed head of Charles the First was held up to the view.-Alice saw no more; she had drawn one long exhausting gasp of breath, which seemed to drag up with it her bursting heart; she fell senseless to the ground.

L. W.

IRRUPTION OF VESUVIUS, 1819.

FROM the period of my arrival in Naples, the irruptions of Vesuvius had been regularly increasing in violence, and I had been advised to make my visit without delay. The party was quickly formed; and we left the city about nine in the evening; my companions were a Mr. M——, a young Frenchman about twenty, who had joined me between Florence and Rome; his uncle, a resident of Naples; and my sister. We reached the foot of the mountain in an hour and a half, at the town of Torre del Greco, where we found the guides, which Mr M had previously engaged, waiting our arrival. They were ten in number, with six mules. We had given notice that we were no flinchers, and therefore two extra mules were provided to carry provisions, with cordage and apparatus necessary to the nature of the excursion, and to enable us the better to meet any casualty.

A

The moment any Inglése appear in these villages, every member of the population is upon the qui-vive, all offering their services, with assurances they are the individuals best calculated for the object in view-having yet perhaps to inquire what the nature of that object may be. But they do not alone offer their services-they thrust themselves upon you, snatch up, and even take out of your hands your luggage, or any trifle they can seize on, so as to hope themselves engaged of your party. Their anxiety in this respect is not surprising this is their sole means of subsistence. The curiosities and phenomena in their locality constitute their crop, if I may so call it, and they gather it in as often as they can force it into maturity. But this alacrity very quickly subsides; they soon yield to the influence of habit and climate, and rarely exhibit the amount of perseverance which the traveller requires. It is the reward which they seek; and they endeavour to obtain it with the smallest amount of exertion and risk.

The necessary arrangements made, the guides lighted their torches, and we proceeded for the mountain. How unlike any thing in England is such a departure! The cries of linkboys and coachmen at the close of our theatres alone furnish some idea of this scene. The garrulity of the Neapolitans is proverbial; they speak all at the same time, each one endeayouring to be heard in preference to his rival. Two or three stragglers joined; and thus we formed a party of about twenty.

Here grow the vines from which is produced the celebrated wine Lachrymæ Christi. The natural warmth of the soil can be compared to the less constant artificial warmth of the stove; and the powerful influence of the sun, during so large a portion of the year, assists probably in giving that peculiarity of taste and that excellence so flattering to the palate of the connoisseur. The road is winding, and as rude as our private farm roads in England which have been neglected. We soon found, however, that we ought to have been more content; for the way now became rugged, and narrowed to a path of two to four feet, with loose stones of various sizes, demanding a constant attention. It is indeed surprising to see the care with which the mules proceed; affording such a strong sense of security that the rider unconsciously disregards the perils of the road. From the earliest ascent the ground appears undulating; or rather the rise seems formed by massive folds, checked and frozen, or cooled, more correctly speaking, in its progress downwards. As you proceed, vegetation, which below abounded with the utmost imaginable luxuriancy, becomes restricted, and no longer obscures the real form and appear

ance of the path, and surrounding soil or rock. After proceeding about two hours, the angle of the rise gradually increasing in our progress, we reached the Atrio dei Cavalli, a sort of landing-place so called, because the traveller can proceed no further mounted, and must here leave his mules until his return. The almost perpendicular form of the part of the mountain we now had to surmount has procured for it the name of the Cone.

The mountain had been convulsed during the last three or four days with increasing violence; and at each throe the lava had boiled over the summit of the cone with more or less abundance. I had perceived this from my residence; and as we neared the mountain the grandeur of each succeeding shock became more awful-for it was no longer the distant view, such as the imagination had been accustomed to con-template. Illusion was now succeeded by a feeling of excitability, such as I had never experienced. I saw the approaching peril-in another moment dangers everywhere surrounded me, yet was I eager to advance. I can now conceive something of the ardour felt amid the horrors of a dreadful conflict; a sensation wholly novel thrilled through my veins; it was not a sense of fear. I urged the party to hasten their preparations. I felt every moment more eager to proceed, and the danger never suggested itself as an obstacle.

But the labour in reserve had often damped the ardour of previous travellers, and our guides informed us it would be necessary before we proceeded, that we should take refreshment. It was midnight;-refresh ourselves at the foot of the cone of Vesuvius, during constantly increasing irruptions— lava overflowing its mouth and running like a river down its sides the thunder roaring beneath the trembling crust on which we stood-refresh ourselves! impossible! But not so with the guides: aware of the labour in reserve, they quietly seated themselves upon pieces of calcined rock to their supper, with the most perfect indifference and undiminished appetite; telling me with great nonchalance I need not be impatient, the irruptions were rapidly increasing in violence, and I should soon have enough to gratify my utmost wishes.

My mouth was really parched with a sense of the surrounding scene, combined with the anxious anticipation of the future. I therefore willingly partook of the wine, but I could not eat. While this tedious meal proceeded, I made some necessary inquiry. At length all again was bustle, and the guides began to harness themselves. The apparatus they fit to their shoulders is very like that used to assist our porters in the use of their barrows; or like the braces adopted to keep back the shoulders of our boarding-school ladies; but

extending behind ten or twelve feet in length, and ending in a noose: so that when the guides by the help of a long staff proceed in pairs from crag to crag, the traveller, holding the noose of each, follows with the utmost facility, in situations apparently inaccessible. Two of the ablest gave their harness to my sister, and I was indeed highly delighted with the har monious exertions of this extraordinary trio. I refused assistance. It appeared to me that I should not make myself thus dependent without necessity; and I proceeded with all possible diligence in their track.

Every account of this volcano, its appearance and phenomena, that I have hitherto seen, seems to me defective, as mine also will seem to every other traveller ;-probably, from the circumstance that the situation of the mountain is ever changing; and from the amount of matter and innumerable stones thrown out, and the quantity of lava flowing during a considerable irruption, the surface cannot remain with the same appearance during two succeeding days. The cone appears to consist of a mass of fragments of blasted rock of all dimensions, from the size of an ordinary pebble to that of the body of a coach; and one piece was shown to us which had lately been thrown up as large as a first-rate house. They were nearly all of one colour-a dark brown approaching to black; for they had all been fused in the same furnace, and all bore more or less the marks of fire. Some were like masses of marble, so smooth that with difficulty we kept our footing, upon a slight inclination; others were of the com mon pumice stone, and these were mixed with quantities of melted minerals. Between and beneath these appeared occa sionally considerable tracts, furrowed with rivers of lava ⚫ emitted on many previous irruptions, exhibiting a surface resembling our ploughed land, but as hard as granite. Climbing up without a staff, I very early found it necessary to use hands as well as feet and knees. Never shall I forget my surprise, when, on slipping from a loose fragment, I seized on another to arrest my sudden fall into the regions I had lately with so much difficulty left behind, and found its surface to consist of innumerable points, too minute to be readily perceived, but very sensible to the touch, as I often had occasion to experience during this, to me, ever memorable ascent. These fragments appeared detached pieces of lava. north side of the mountain had, besides a fair share of rocks and stones, an immense assemblage of ashes and cinders, which, from their lightness, had been blown by the south wind to this quarter.

The

We had been proceeding about an hour during ordinary shocks, when the thunders below simultaneously arrested the

whole of the guides, who called out to us to be upon the watch. The rolling increased the mountain heaved, and-how faint will be description! Imagine the explosion of ten thousand pieces of ordnance-imagine ten thousand rockets darting at one instant into another region; add their hissing to the detonating explosion, and you approach the tremendous effect produced.

A million red hot fragments flew into air, like so many bombs from one terrible mortar-a volume of flame succeeded, which seemed to light up the earth-the heavens-all nature! And before the senses could embrace the sublimity of the scene, the crash of falling clouds of rocks and stones reminded us we had better rouse from our stupifying astonishment, and look to our personal safety. Immediately succeeding the discharge of missiles, appeared another wonderful source of stupendous grandeur-the caldron boiled over, and the lava, a magnificent river of liquid fire, rushed from the crater in majestic flood. As soon as relieved from the immediate danger of the late volley, our guides had assembled, and while I was in the fever of contemplation, they announced that the next succeeding explosion would be yet more severe, and we must retire. I laughed at them so soon as I could get sufficient command over my anger; but laughter would not do. I then threatened a refusal to pay ;-they had too much reliance upon an appeal to their police, I presume, to allow that to operate. * At last, I said, "retire, if you please-we proceed to our destination." They stared-consulted a little-jabbered something about Inglése, and, at length, advanced. We proceeded onward about twenty minutes, observing slight intervening shocks, when we had once more occasion to halt. The flame had nearly subsided shortly after the last explosion, and had been succeeded by an immense body of black dense smoke. This too had become lightened; but, in sympathy with subterranean thunders, which again seemed to approach from considerable distance, the volume of smoke thickened, seemed to fill the crater, and rise into the higher heavens. Either the guides had not been mistaken in foretelling increased violence; or greater self-possession allowed me to feel more intensely this new shock. It seemed to me the full meridian of magnificent nature-terrible in its tones-terrible in its aspectterrible in its power!

The stones rattled around us as they fell, yet we again escaped. But the guides now spoke in a tone of resolution, and insisted upon our immediate return. Two of them, without consultation, had decamped, and one was already at a considerable distance. Some knowledge of human nature had taught me, however, the advantage of finding a weak place;