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THE DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII

BULWER LYTTON

NOTE. In the year A.D. 79 the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by an eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. The following selection is taken from "Last Days of Pompeii," a novel in which Glaucus, an Athenian, Ione, his betrothed, and the blind slave, Nydia, are among the 5 chief characters.

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The cloud which had scattered so deep a murkiness over the day had now settled into a solid and impenetrable It resembled less even the thickest gloom of a night in the open air than the close and blind darkness of 10 some narrow room. But 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 rivaled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly 15 blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky

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a livid and snakelike 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 20 arch to arch, then suddenly dying into a sickly paleness, like the ghost of their own life!

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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 5 vast mimicries of human or of monster shapes, striding across the gloom, hurtling 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 vapors were as the bodily forms of gigantic 10 foes, the agents of terror and of death.

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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 vapor. In some places 15 immense fragments of rock, 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, 20 -nor could chariot or litter be kept steady even on the most level ground.

Sometimes the huger stones, striking against each other as they fell, broke into countless fragments, emitting sparks of fire, which caught whatever was combustible 25 within their reach; and along the plains beyond the city the darkness was now terribly relieved, for several houses

and even vineyards had been set in flames, and at various intervals the fires rose sullenly and fiercely against the solid gloom. To add to this partial relief of the darkness, the citizens had, here and there, in the more public places, 5 such as the porticoes of the temples and the entrances to the forum, endeavored to place rows of torches; but these rarely continued long; the showers and the winds extinguished them.

Frequently, by the momentary light of these torches, 10 parties of fugitives encountered each other, some hurrying toward the sea, others flying from the sea back to the land. Wild-haggard - ghastly with supernatural fears, these groups encountered each other, but without the leisure to speak, to consult, to advise. Nothing in all the 15 various and complicated machinery of social life was left save the primal law of self-preservation.

Through this awful scene did Glaucus wend his way, accompanied by Ione and the blind girl. Suddenly a rush of hundreds, in their path to the sea, swept by them. 20 Nydia was torn from the side of Glaucus, who with Ione was borne rapidly onward; and when the crowd (whose forms they saw not, so thick was the gloom) were gone, Nydia was still separated from their side. Glaucus shouted her name. No answer came. They retraced their steps,25 in vain they could not discover her, it was evident she had been swept along by the human current. Their friend, their preserver, was lost! And hitherto Nydia had been

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their guide. Her blindness rendered the scene familiar to her alone. Accustomed, through a perpetual night, to tread the windings of the city, she had led them unerringly toward the seashore, by which they had resolved to hazard 5 an escape. Now, which way could they wend? All was rayless to them a maze without a clew.

Advancing, as men grope for escape in a dungeon, they continued their uncertain way. At the moments when the volcanic lightnings lingered over the streets, they were 10 enabled, by that awful light, to steer and guide their progress; yet little did the view it presented to them cheer or encourage their path. In parts where the ashes lay dry and uncommixed with the boiling torrents cast upward from the mountain at capricious intervals, the surface of 15 the earth presented a leprous and ghastly white. In other places cinder and rock lay matted in heaps. And ever as the winds swept howling along the street, they bore sharp streams of burning dust, and such sickening and poisonous vapors as took away, for the instant, breath 20 and consciousness.

Meanwhile Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glaucus and Ione, had in vain endeavored to regain them. In vain she raised that plaintive cry so peculiar to the blind; it was lost amidst a thousand shrieks of more 25 selfish terror. Again and again she returned to the spot where they had been divided, to be dashed aside in the impatience of distraction. Who in that hour spared one

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