s die every year in
the United Kingdom alone. We know quite well that every one of those
who perished in Messina must have paid his debt to nature in, at most,
a few decades. So, then, the whole point in our arraignment is
this--It would not have been cruel had these deaths been spread over a
period of time, but it is cruel that they should have taken place
simultaneously; it would not have been cruel had the victims of the
earthquake died of illnesses--in many cases prolonged and painful--but
it is cruel {116} that death should have come upon them swiftly,
instantaneously, without menace or lingering pain; it would not have
been cruel had children survived to mourn their parents, husbands their
wives, brother the loss of brother, as in the ordinary course--but it
is cruel that by dying in the same hour they were spared the pang of
parting. We repeat that it is because we ordinarily use our
imaginations too little that we are so apt to lose our balance and
sense of proportion in the presence of these catastrophes; and it may
be permissible to point out that there is probably, quality for
quality, and quantity for quantity, more grey, hopeless suffering, more
wretchedness and tragedy, in London to-day than was caused by the
Sicilian catastrophe--suffering and wretchedness that are due not to
nature, but to sin, though not necessarily on the sufferer's part.

And there is, in justice, something more to be said when we speak of
these dire visitations. While every instinct of humanity inspires us
with sympathy for the victims buried under the ruins of Messina and
Reggio, it is, of course, a matter of common knowledge that the soil on
those coasts is volcanic, and liable to such commotions; if men will
take the risk of living in such localities, we may pity them when the
disaster comes, but we cannot very fitly impeach Providence. There is
a village near Chur in Switzerland, which has twice been wiped out by
avalanches, yet each time re-built {117} on the same spot; year by year
material is visibly accumulating for a third deadly fall, and when it
takes place, as take place it will, men will speak of the dispassionate
cruelty of nature. Time after time the lava from Mount Vesuvius has
overwhelmed the localities that nestle on its slopes, but human
heedlessness proves incurable. If the Sicilians, knowing the nature of
the soil, had built their towns of isolated, one-storied, wooden
structures, at a reasonable distance