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apprehensions about the future, arises on the
recollection that, beneath a soil so fruitful
and so smiling, lie edifices, gardens, and whole
towns swallowed up. Portici rests upon
Herculaneum; its environs upon Resina:
and at a little distance is Pompeii, in the
streets of which, after more than seventeen
centuries of non-existence, the astonished
traveller now walks. After a long interval
of repose, in the first year of the reign of
Titus, (the seventy-ninth of the christian
era,) the volcano suddenly broke out, ejecting
thick clouds of ashes and pumice-stones, be-
neath which Herculaneum, Stabia, and Pom-
peii, were completely buried. This eruption
was fatal to the elder Pliny, the historian,
who fell a victim to his humanity and love
of science. Even at this day, in speaking of
Vesuvius, the remembrance of his untimely
death excites a melancholy regret. All the
coast to the east of the gulf of Naples was,
on the above occasion, ravaged and destroyed,
presenting nothing but a long succession of
ejected matters from Herculaneum to Stabia,
The destruction did not, however extend to
the western part, but stopped at Naples,
which suffered comparatively little.
Thirty-eight eruptions of Vesuvius are re-
corded in history up to the year 1806. That
of 1779 has been described by Sir William
Hamilton as among the most remarkable,
