stant gain, every day that the weather will permit my going out. and sometimes six pistoles." "EI 6. If there is an individual in the morning of life who has not yet made his choice between the flowery path of indul gence and the rough ascent of honest industry, if there is one who is ashamed to get his living by any branch of honest labor, let him reflect that the youth who was carrying the theod'olite and surveyor's chain through the mountain passes of the Alleghanies, in the month of March, sleeping on a bundle of hay before the fire, in a settler's log-cabin, and not ashamed to boast that he did it for his doubloon a day, is George Washington; that the life he led trained him up to command the armies of United America; that the money he earned was the basis of that fortune which enabled him afterwards to bestow his services, without reward, on a bleeding and impoverished country. 7. For three years was the young Washington employed, the greater part of the time, and whenever the season would permit, in this laborious and healthful occupation; and I know not if it would be deemed unbecoming, were a thoughtful student of our history to say that he could almost hear the voice of Providence, in the language of Milton, announce its high purpose, "To exercise him in the wilderness; There shall he first lay down the rudiments EVERETT. CXVIII. VESUVIUS. 1. My first sight of Vesuvius was from the upper end of the street To-le'do, in Naples. From that point the prospect is uninterrupted. Your eye passes directly to the mountain, over the tops of the streets, houses, churches, palaces, of the intervening villages, to the summit of the crater. The clear, transparent air, and the inky blackness of the whole hill, its only tint, bring it so near to you that you almost start as it is first revealed. It seems to hang over and threaten the city. It is eight miles distant, yet you would think it scarce three. 2. Every roughness, the deep ravines' and fissures with which the face of the mountain is everywhere scamed, the rude piles of extinct lavas, the ragged angular masses of fallen and shattered rocks, are all visible at that distance; and the effect is as of some vast natural ruin - a wide scene of fearful desolation. The soft, green turf, the richly-variegated shrubbery, the almost tropical vegetation, the gentle elevations and depressions of the soil, which must once have clothed the hill with an unequalled loveliness—and such is the testimony of antiquity to its appearance before the eruption of 79-of all this, now, not a leaf, not a tint remains. Neither man, nor beast, nor insect, can inhabit there — and the solitary bird could not light in hope of a single berry or worm. 3. But it must be-not described-but by your own imaginations represented, in one other aspect, as it appeared, after a long repose of centuries, when, in the year 79 of our era, in the reign of Titus, it suddenly was converted to a mountain of fire; burying the surrounding territories, in first the thickest darkness for several days, then from beneath the canopy of cloud pouring out from its sides rivers of lava and other melted substances, which with more than the light of the sun illuminated the earth and the overhanging clouds, and, making their way down the mountain, overwhelmed the city of Hercula'neum, burying it to a depth of from sixty to a hundred feet below the molten mass; and at the same time destroying Pompeii and Stabiæ by successive showers of stifling ashes. 4. The younger Pliny, living at that time, describes the terrific scene in a letter to the historian Tac'itus.46 His uncle, Pliny the naturalist, stationed at Mi-se'-num, twenty miles from the mountain, as commander of the Roman fleet at that place, drawn first by a scientific curiosity to witness nearer the dreadful scene, then by a sentiment of compassion for the multitudes whom he saw perishing in the most miserable manner, and venturing too near the scene of danger, was himself overtaken by blasts of the suffocating smokes and gas'es that raged everywhere around the hill, and perished among those whom he went to save. 5. Pliny addresses two letters to Tacitus; in the first confining himself chiefly to the circumstances attending the death of his uncle, in the second relating his own experiences and observations during the eruption of the mountain. From this I make an extract: "There had been," he says, "many days before, shocks of an earthquake, which the less surprised us as they are extremely frequent in Campania; but they were so particularly violent this night, that they not only shook everything about us, but seemed indeed to threaten universal destruction. My mother flew to my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken me. We went out into a small court belonging to the house, which separated the sea from the buildings. 6. " Though it was now morning, the light was extremely faint and languid; the buildings all around tottered, and though we stood upon open ground, yet, as the place was narrow and confined, there was no remaining there without certain and great danger; we therefore resolved to quit the town. The people followed us in the utmost consternation, and pressed in great crowds about in our way. Being got to a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The chariots, which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so agitated backwards and forwards, though upon the most level ground, that we could not keep them steady even by supporting them by large stones. 7. "The sea seemed to roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by the convulsive motions of the earth. It is certain, at least, that the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea animals were left upon it. On the other side, a black and dreadful cloud, bursting with an igneous serpentine vapor, darted out a long train of fire, resembling flashes of lightning. Soon afterward the cloud seemed to descend and cover the whole ocean, as indeed it entirely hid the island of Căpriæ and the promontory of Misēnum. The ashes now began to fall upon us, though in no great quantity. I turned my head, and observed behind us a thick smoke, which came rolling after us like a torrent. 8. "I proposed, while we had yet any light, to turn out of the high road, lest we should be pressed to death in the dark by the crowd that followed. We had scarce stepped out of the path, when darkness overspread us, not like that of a cloudy night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it is shut up, and all lights are extinct. Nothing then was to be heard but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the cries of men- some calling for their children, others for their parents, others for their husbands, and distinguishing each other by their voices; one lamenting his own fate, another that of his family, some wishing to die, some lifting their hands to the gods; but the greater part imagining that the last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy both the world and the gods together. 9. "At length a glimmering light appeared, which we imagined to be rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames (as in truth it was), than the return of day however, the fire fell at a distance from us. Then again we were immersed in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the * In their ignorance of the one true God, most of the Romans of Pliny's day were Polytheists, or believers in many gods. heap. I might boast that, during all this scene of horror, not a sigh or expression of fear escaped me, had not my support been founded on that miserable though strong consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same calamity, and that I imagined that I was perishing with the world itself. 10. "At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated (after a duration of three days), by degrees, like a cloud or smoke; the real day returned, and even the sun appeared, though very faintly, and as when an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented itself to our eyes seemed changed, being covered over with white ashes, as with a deep snow. We returned to Mi-se'num, where we refreshed ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night between hope and fear, for the earthquake still continued. However, my mother and I, notwithstanding the danger we had passed and that still threatened us, had no thought of leaving the place till we should receive some account of my uncle." 11. He had already perished on the beach at Stabiæ, ten miles from Vesuvius, the second day of the eruption — this was now the fourth. There appear to have been three days of total darkness, except occasionally relieved by the breaking out of flames or lava. It may be imagined what the scene must have been which presented itself in the neighborhood of Herculaneum and Pompeii, or at Naples, when that which Pliny describes occurred at Mi-se'-num, twenty miles, nearly, from the mountain, with Naples itself, and the high lands intervening between it and the volcano; and what multitudes must have perished, if at ten miles distance Pliny was suffocated by the poisonous gases. 12. I believe no account has come to us how great the destruction of life was on this occasion, nor even of what befell the Neapolitans. The only fact in this relation is the immediate relief which the Emperor Titus, with characteristic humanity, dispatched to the scene, as soon as the news of the disaster had reached Rome. We may readily conjecture, that all the inhabitants in the immediate neighborhood of the hill must have had sufficient warning by the earthquake, and the first bursting out of smoke from the crater, to enable them to escape. And that the most did escape, at least from Pompeii, is proved by the comparatively few skeletons that have been discovered there. WM. WARE. CXIX. THE SWORD AND THE PRESS. 1. WHEN Tamerlane had finished building his pyramid of seventy thousand human skulls, and was seen standing at the gate of Damascus, glittering in his steel, with his battle-axe on his shoulder, till his fierce hosts filed out to new victories and car nage, the pale looker-on might have fancied that Nature was in her death-throes; for havoc and despair had taken possession of the earth, and the sun of manhood seemed setting in a sea of blood. EI 2. Yet it might be on that very gala-day of Tamerlane that a little boy was playing nine-pins in the streets of Mentz, whose history was more important than that of twenty Tamerlanes. The Khan, with his shaggy demons of the wilderness, "passed away like a whirlwind," to be forgotten forever; and that German artisan has wrought a benefit which is yet immeasurably expanding itself, and will continue to expand itself, through all countries and all times. 3. What are the conquests and the expeditions of the whole corporation of captains, from Walter the Penniless to Napoleon Bonaparte, compared with those movable types of Faust? EL Truly it is a mortifying thing for your conqueror to reflect how perishable is the metal with which he hammers with such violence; how the kind earth will soon shroud up his bloody footprints; and all that he achieved and skilfully piled together will be but like his own canvas city of a camp- this evening loud with life, to-morrow all struck and vanished, — "a few pits and heaps of straw." 4. For here, as always, it continues true, that the deepest force is the stillest; that, as in the fable, the mild shining of the sun shall silently accomplish what the fierce blustering of the tempest in vain essayed. Above all, it is ever to be kept in mind that not by material but by moral power are men and their actions to be governed. How noiseless is thought! No rolling of drums, no tramp of squadrons, no tumult of innumerable baggage-wagons, attend its movements. 5. In what obscure and sequestered places may the head be meditating which is one day to be crowned with more than imperial authority! for kings and emperors will be among its ministering servants; it will rule not over124 but in all heads; and with these solitary combinations of ideas, and with magic form'ulas, bend the world to its will. The time may come when Napoleon himself will be better known for his laws than his bat tles, and the victory of Waterloo prove less momentous than the opening of the first Mechanics' Institute. Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword. THOMAS CARLYLE. Behold The arch enchanter's wand!-itself a nothing! But taking sorcery from the master hand To paralyze the Caesars, and to strike The loud earth breathless! Take away the sword- LYTTON. |