day the darkness, by degrees,
began to clear away. The day appeared, the sun shining forth; but all
nature seemed changed. Buried beneath the lava lay temple and circus,
the tribunal, the shrine, the frescoed wall, the bright mosaic floor;
but there was neither life nor motion in either city of the dead,
though the sea which once bore their argosies still shimmered in the
sunshine, and the mountain which accomplished their destruction still
breathed forth smoke and fire.

The scene was changed; all was over; smoke and vapor and showers had
ceased, and Vesuvius had returned to its normal slumber. Pompeii and
Herculaneum were no more. In their place was a desolated plain, with
no monuments visible, no house to be seen--nothing but a great surface
of white ashes, which hardened and petrified, and finally
disintegrated into soil upon which, years after, might be seen the
fruitful vine, the waving corn, and wild flowers in all their
loveliness and beauty, hiding the hideous tragedy of a bygone age.

It was about the middle of the eighteenth century that systematic
excavations in the ashes that covered Pompeii began. Since that time
the work has been slow, though continuous, and great progress has been
made in disinterring the buried city. To-day it is a municipal museum
of the Roman Empire as it was 1,800 years ago. The architecture is
almost unmarred; the colors of decorated tiles on the walls are still
bright; the wheel marks are fresh looking; the picture of domestic
life as it was is complete, except for the people who were destroyed
or driven from the city. No other place in all the world so completely
portrays that period of the past to us as does Pompeii, overwhelmed by
Vesuvius, hidden for centuries, and now once more in view to the world
to-day.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MOUNT AETNA AND THE SICILIAN HORRORS.

BY TRUMBULL WHITE.

=A Volcano with a Record of Twenty-five Centuries--Seventy-eight
Recorded Eruptions--Three Hundred Thousand Inhabitants Dwelling
on the Slopes of the Mountain and in the Valleys at its
Base--Stories of Earthquake Shock and Lava Flows--Tales of
Destruction--Described by Ancient and Modern Writers and
Eye-Witnesses.=

Mount AEtna, one of the most celebrated volcanoes in the world, is
situated on the eastern sea-board of Sicily. The ancient poets often
alluded to it, and by some it was feigned to be the prison of the
giant Euceladus or Typhon, by others the forge