by which, on that
side, the city is as yet approached. Above all, rode the cloud-capped
summit of the Dread Mountain, with the shadows, now dark, now light,
betraying the mossy caverns and ashy rocks, which testified the past
conflagrations, and might have prophesied--but man is blind--that which
was to come!

Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of
the place wore so gloomy and stern a hue; why, in those smiling plains,
for miles around--to Baiae and Misenum--the poets had imagined the
entrance and thresholds of their hell--their Acheron, and their fabled
Styx: why, in those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed
the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought
the victory of heaven--save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted
summit, fancy might think to read the characters of the Olympian
thunderbolt.

But it was neither the rugged height of the still volcano, nor the
fertility of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor
the glittering villas of a polished and luxurious people, that now
arrested the eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, the
mountain of Vesuvius descended to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated
ridge, broken here and there by jagged crags and copses of wild foliage.
At the base of this lay a marshy and unwholesome pool; and the intent
gaze of Arbaces caught the outline of some living form moving by the
marshes, and stooping ever and anon as if to pluck its rank produce.

'Ho!' said he, aloud, 'I have then, another companion in these unworldly
night--watches. The witch of Vesuvius is abroad. What! doth she, too,
as the credulous imagine--doth she, too, learn the lore of the great
stars? Hath she been uttering foul magic to the moon, or culling (as her
pauses betoken) foul herbs from the venomous marsh? Well, I must see
this fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human lore
is despicable. Despicable only you--ye fat and bloated things--slaves
of luxury--sluggards in thought--who, cultivating nothing but the barren
sense, dream that its poor soil can produce alike the myrtle and the
laurel. No, the wise only can enjoy--to us only true luxury is given,
when mind, brain, invention, experience, thought, learning, imagination,
all contribute like rivers to swell the seas of SENSE!--Ione!'

As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts sunk at once
into a more deep a