mple souls were now weak enough to pay him; the shouts of
admiration, and of joy, universally succeeded to the shrieks of anguish,
and the fearful cries of desperation; the contest was immediately
brought to a close, and peace everywhere loudly proclaimed. Wonders were
not wanting on the occasion--The blood of St. Januarius miraculously
flowed this very evening, at the intercession of the venerable
archbishop, and his pious clergy; whose devotion to the saint, appears
to have far surpassed their loyalty to their sovereign: and, though a
fiery eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which had been tranquil for the
preceding five years, was actually seen to burst forth on the very day,
the 24th of January 1799, even that ancient proof of the anger of the
saint was, in the madness of the moment, considered as an additional
token of his holiness's approbation! Such is the inconsistency of
untutored folly, and the fate of misinstructed superstition; the power
of superior cunning, and the effect of unprincipled deceit.

The concern of the good King and Queen of Naples, at the calamitous
effects of these successful stratagems on the deluded people, could not
fail to be excessive; and that of our indignant hero, and his estimable
friends, were little inferior. The despicable frauds, by which the
miserable vulgar had been ensnared, were to them abundantly manifest;
but they well knew that, had they even been present, and assured the
credulous creatures, that the liquification of St. Januarius's blood,
and even the blaze of Mount Vesuvius--which was unaccompanied by any
natural overflow of the lava--were both easily effected by a simple
chemical process, and a few kindled faggots and barrels of gunpowder
thrown into the crater, they would most probably have been instantly
massacred for what the priests must have necessarily pronounced, for
their own safety, the most blasphemous of all possible impieties.

In writing, on the 28th of January, to the Honourable Mr. Windham, at
Leghorn, Lord Nelson thus foretells the fate of Tuscany, and of all the
Emperor of Germany's Italian dominions. "Alas!" says his lordship, "the
fancied neutrality of Tuscany will be it's downfall. You see it, and it
cannot fail soon to happen. Tuscany does not, or cannot, support it's
neutrality for us or Naples; only to protect the French, is this name
prostituted. Seratti, who is a man of sound sense, must see it. When the
emperor loses Tuscany and Naples--which, I am b