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5. ROME.

O Rome! my country! city of the soul!
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee,
Lone mother of dead empires! and control
In their shut breasts their petty misery.
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples, ye
Whose agonies are evils of a day :

A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay.

The Niobe of nations! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe;
An empty urn within her withered hands,
Whose holy dust was scattered long ago;
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now;
The very sepulchres lie tenantless

Of their heroic dwellers: dost thou flow,
Old Tiber, through a marble wilderness?

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress.

The Goth, the Christian, time, war, flood, and fire,
Have dealt upon the seven-hilled city's pride;
She saw here glories star by star expire,
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride,
Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide
Temple and tower went down, nor left a site :
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void,
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light,

And say, "Here was, or is," where all is doubly night?...

Alas the lofty city! and alas

The trebly hundred triumphs, and the day
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away!
Alas for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay,
And Livy's pictured page!-but these shall be
Her resurrection; all beside, decay.

Alas for Earth! for never shall we see

That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was free.

BYRON.

6. VESUVIUS.

Vesuvius is, after the glaciers, the most impressive exhibition of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not the immeasurable greatness, the overpowering magnificence, nor, above all, the radiant beauty of the glaciers; but it has all their character of tremendous and irresistible strength. From Resina to the hermit-` age you wind up the mountain, and cross a vast stream of hardened lava, which is an actual image of the waves of the sea, changed into a hard, black stone by enchantment. The lines of the boiling flood 3 seem to hang in the air, and it is difficult to believe. that the billows which seem hurrying down on you are not actually in motion. This plain was once a sea of liquid fire.

From the hermitage we crossed another vast stream of lava, and then went on foot up the cone (this is the only part of the ascent in which there is any difficulty, and that difficulty has been much exaggerated). It is composed of rocks of lava and declivities of ashes; by ascending the former and descending the latter there is very little fatigue, On the summit is a kind of irregular plain, the most horrible chaos that can be imagined-riven into ghastly chasms, and heaped up with tumuli of great stones and cinders, and enormous rocks blackened and calcined, which had been thrown from the volcano upon one another in terrible confusion. In the midst stands the conical hill, from which volumes of smoke and the fountains of liquid fire are rolled forth for ever.

The mountain is at present in a slight state of eruption; and a thick, heavy smoke is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by enormous columns of an impenetrable black bituminous vapour, which is hurled up, fold after fold, into the sky with a deep, hollow sound, and fiery stones are rained down from its darkness, and a black shower of ashes fell even where we sat. The lava, like the glacier, creeps on perpetually, with a crackling sound as of suppressed fire. There are several springs of lava; and in one place it gushes precipitously over a high crag, rolling down the half-molten rocks and its own overhanging waves-a cataract of quivering fire. We approached the extremity of one of the rivers of lava. It is about twenty feet in breadth and ten in height; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, its motion was very slow. We saw the masses of its dark exterior surface detach themselves as it moved, and betray the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the fire is but slightly seen; you only observe a tremulous motion in the air, and streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke.

At length we saw the sun sink between Capreae and Inarime, and as the darkness increased, the effect of the fire became more beautiful. We were, as it were, surrounded by streams and cataracts of the red and radiant fire; and in the midst, from the column of bituminous smoke shot up into the air, fell the vast masses of rock, white with the light of their intense heat, leaving behind them, through the dark vapour, trains of splendour.

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We descended by torch-light; and I should have 7 enjoyed the scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I know not how, to the hermitage in a state of intense bodily suffering, the worst effect of which was spoiling the pleasure of Mary and C. Our 7 guides on the occasion were complete savages. You have no idea of the horrible cries which they suddenly utter no one knows why-the clamour, the vociferation, the tumult. (C- in her palanquin

suffered most from it; and when I had gone on before, they threatened to leave her in the middle of the road-which they would have done had not my Italian servant promised them a beating, after which they became quiet.) Nothing, however, can be more picturesque than the gestures and the physiognomies of these savage people. And when, in the darkness of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing in chorus some fragments of their wild but sweet national music, the effect is exceedingly fine.

"Essays, Letters from Abroad, etc.," by P. B. SHELLEY.

7. SPIRIT OF DELIGHT.

Rarely, rarely comest thou,

Spirit of Delight!

Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
"Tis since thou art fled away.

How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free,
Thou wilt scoff at pain.

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