nt or the lover of Pompeii is familiar. How many a
time has this line of roadway rung with the sound of the last sad appeal,
the thrice repeated valediction: "_Vale, vale, vale!_ farewell until the
day when Nature will allow us to follow thee!" How often have the wooden
pyres flung up in these precincts their clouds of perfumed smoke into the
clear air, now redolent with the aroma of yellow broom, of dewy thyme and
of sweet marigolds! Perhaps it was amidst these lines of cypress-set tombs
by the Herculaneum Gate that the poetic genius, whose verses were spurned
by his own generation, composed his famous Ode to Naples, for in its
opening lines Shelley tells us it was the aspect of the "city disinterred"
that gave him inspiration:--

"Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,
Like winter-leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow,
Because the crystal silence of the air
Weighed on their life...."

Tranquilly and slowly descends night upon the untenanted city, as one by
one the stars begin to peep forth like chrysolites in the heavens, which
have changed from azure to a deep indigo during the sunset hour. Amid
chilly dews, to the sound of the evening bell from the distant church of
Santa Maria di Pompeii, we hasten in the growing darkness from the Street
of the Tombs towards our modest inn outside the Marine Gate, anticipating
with delight a ramble in the city in the freshness of the coming morning.

CHAPTER IV

VESUVIUS: THE STORY OF THE MOUNTAIN

The first appearance of Vesuvius, whether viewed from the deck of a
steamer entering the Bay of Naples or espied from the window of a railway
carriage on the main line running southward from Rome, makes an impression
that will linger for ever in the memory. It is open to argument which is
the more striking of the two experiences: the Mountain rising proudly from
the deep blue waters into the paler shade of the upper air, or its
graceful broken contour seen from the landward side to the north across
the green fertile plains of the Campagna Felice. From a long acquaintance
with both ways of approaching Naples, we are inclined to prefer the latter
view. T