lf up with the assistance of two of
his servants, and instantly fell down dead, suffocated, as I conjecture,
by some gross and noxious vapor, having always had weak lungs, and being
frequently subject to a difficulty of breathing.

"As soon as it was light again, which was not till the third day after
this melancholy accident, his body was found entire, and without any
marks of violence upon it, exactly in the same posture as that in which
he fell, and looking more like a man asleep than dead. During all this
time my mother and I were at Misenum. But this has no connection with
your history, as your inquiry went no farther than concerning my uncle's
death; with that, therefore, I will put an end to my letter. Suffer me
only to add, that I have faithfully related to you what I was either
an eye-witness of myself, or received immediately after the accident
happened, and before there was any time to vary the truth. You will
choose out of this narrative such circumstances as shall be most
suitable to your purpose; for there is a great difference between what
is proper for a letter and a history: between writing to a friend and
writing to the public. Farewell."

In this account, which was drawn up some years after the event, from
the recollections of a student eighteen years old, we recognize the
continual earthquakes; the agitated sea with its uplifted bed; the
flames and vapors of an ordinary eruption, probably attended by lava as
well as ashes. But it seems likely that the author's memory, or rather
the information communicated to him regarding the closing scene of
Pliny's life, was defective. Flames and sulphurous vapors could hardly
be actually present at Stabiae, ten miles from the centre of the
eruption.

That lava flowed at all from Vesuvius on this occasion has been usually
denied; chiefly because at Pompeii and Herculaneum the causes of
destruction were different--ashes overwhelmed the former, mud concreted
over the latter. We observe, indeed, phenomena on the shore near Torre
del Greco which seem to require the belief that currents of lava had
been solidified there at some period before the construction of certain
walls and floors, and other works of Roman date. In the Oxford Museum,
among the specimens of lava to which the dates are assigned, is one
referred to A. D. 79, but there is no mode of proving it to have
belonged to the eruption of that date.

PLINY'S SECOND LETTER

A second letter from Pliny t