With this fleeting glimpse at the public life of the city, let us now turn our attention to its domestic arrangements. Of the many houses which have been excavated of recent years under the truly admirable superintendence of Signor Fiorelli, none is better calculated to give us a striking impression of the working details of an upper-class Roman household than the private dwelling which is known equally under the two names of the Casa Nuova and the House of the Vettii;—perhaps the former name has now ceased to own any significance, since the buildings were laid bare as far back as the winter of 1894-5. An hour or two spent in a careful inspection of this house and its contents is to most persons worth four times the same amount of time occupied in aimless wandering amongst the hot glaring streets of the city, peeping into this courtyard and that, and listening to the interminable tales of guide or custodian. If we study the Casa Nuova intelligently, lovingly and minutely, it will not be long before we obtain a tolerable grasp of Roman life and manners, which will prove of immense service and of genuine delight. What then is it, the question will be asked, that makes the House of the Vettii so valuable as an example of antique architecture and decoration, in preference to other mansions which can boast an equal and often a greater distinction? The answer is simple enough: it is because this particular group of buildings has been allowed to remain as far as practicable in the exact condition wherein it was originally unearthed, when its various rooms and courts were once more exposed to the light of day. For until the clearing of this "new house" a decade or so ago, no proper opportunity had so far been afforded to the amateur of our own times of judging for himself the interior of a Roman dwelling in full working order, and with all its furniture, paintings, and utensils complete. Up to this, almost every object of value had been removed at once for safety, every fresco even of importance had been cut bodily out of its setting and placed in one of those immense halls on the ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments of all sizes, a medley of domestic subjects and of classical myths! Torn from the walls they were specially executed to adorn, divorced from their proper scheme of surrounding ornament, these wan dejected ghosts stare at us like faces out of a mist. The uninitiated cannot find pleasure in them, for they have no pretention to be called works of art; on the contrary they form an inherent part of a conventional system of house decoration. The classical student can of course find many points of interest in the incidents portrayed, but all charm of local environment is absent;—it is, in short, impossible to judge of Roman decoration from this collection of crumbling, fading pieces of painted stucco. It would be as easy to imagine the effect of a rose-bush in full bloom from the sight of a few withered rose-buds, pressed until every vestige of colour had left their petals, as to understand the significance of antique domestic art from the contents of the Museo Nazionale.

But here, in the House of the Vettii, the public was for the first time initiated into the mysteries of true Roman life; here it was admitted to gaze upon the fruits of classical taste and refinement, and to contrast them, favourably or unfavourably, with prevailing modern standards. The Casa Nuova has been left as an object lesson, a complete museum in itself, wherein every daily incident of Pompeian life, every domestic secret, reveal themselves to our inquisitive eyes. Here in the roofless halls we can be taken from entrance to dining-hall, from atrium to sleeping rooms, spying into the minutest detail of shape, size and colour, as though we were seriously intending to rent the house for our own habitation. The last tenant has even left his money-chest in his hall, his pots and pans in the kitchen, and as we inspect his utensils, we wonder if they would suit our own requirements to-day. Of portable objects of value—plate, jewels, statuettes of precious metals and the like—belonging to the late owner, there is certainly no trace, for Signor Fiorelli's labourers were not the first to break the deep silence of this buried mansion. For it was the survivors of the stricken town, the citizens of Pompeii themselves, who were the foremost pioneers to excavate, and they carried off every work of art they could conveniently remove. Cutting from above into the deposit of ashes that filled the streets, they managed to reach in course of time the level of the ground, after which they tunnelled from room to room, from house to house, collecting every object they thought worth the trouble of transporting. Perhaps the owners of the house, the Vettii themselves, presuming they escaped in the general catastrophe, may have returned with skilled workmen to recover some of their treasures; perhaps some "man of three letters"—the colloquial Roman term for thief (fur)—may have forestalled the masters' efforts—who knows? And at this distance of time, who cares?

The house once occupied by Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Corvina stands in a quiet district not far from the Capuan Gate, and consequently at some distance from the Forum. Like all Roman habitations it was essentially Oriental in its outward aspect, and must have resembled closely any one of those mysterious dwellings of wealthy Arab citizens which we constantly encounter in the native quarters of Algiers or Tunis. The gateway giving on the street was wide, certainly, but it was well defended both by human and canine porters; its windows were few and small, and were probably closely latticed like those of the nunneries which we sometimes perceive overhead in the crowded streets of Naples. There must have been something austere, even suspicious, in the external appearance of the Casa de' Vettii, but snarling dog and grim janitor have long since disappeared, and we pass unmolested through the atrium and thence into the Great Peristyle, which is perhaps the most remarkable feature of this house. The peristyle, as its name implies, is a Greek importation in a Roman city, and its use would have been scorned by the old-fashioned citizens, such as the master of the "House of the Surgeon"; yet it was in truth admirably suited to the character of Southern Italy, where it afforded shelter from sun and wind, and its arcades protected from the rainfall. The peristyle of the Vettii, with its gaudily tinted pillars of stucco, is highly ornate; perhaps it passes the limits of good taste in certain points of colour and aesthetic decoration, yet the general effect is undoubtedly pleasing to the eye. This courtyard is at once a lounge open to the sky; it is a garden; it is an art-gallery; for the cheerful court of Greek domestic architecture had nothing in common with its successor of the Middle Ages, the monastic cloister of religious meditation. Cannot we imagine to ourselves the goodman of the house proudly leading his guests after a sumptuous meal in the adjacent dining-room into the cool corridors of his peristyle, in order to point out to them his statues and vases of bronze or porphyry, and to expatiate upon their value or elegance of form? On such a festive occasion these great shallow basins of pure white marble before us would be heaped high with fragrant pyramids of red and white roses, roses that were perhaps plucked all dewy in the famous gardens of Paestum on the other side of Mons Gaurus. For the flowering shrubs in the tiny pleasaunce itself are far too precious to be stripped of their blossoms in so lavish a manner, and perhaps if Vettius be anything of an amateur gardener, he may comment to his visitors upon the rare plants that fill his diminutive flower-beds. Careful and reverent hands have restored the little garden as near as possible to its pristine plan and appearance. There are still standing the two bronze statues of urchins holding in their chubby arms ducks from whose bills once gushed the limpid water, making a soothing sound amidst the alleys of the peristyle; corroded and injured they certainly appear, yet here they hold their original positions in Vettius' domain long after temple and tower have fallen to the ground. The marble chairs and tripod tables likewise remain, and around them still thrive the very plants that the servants of the house were wont to tend in the days of Titus. For, by a rare chance, we find depicted on the walls of the excavated house the actual flowers and herbs that were popular during Vettius' lifetime, and these have been replanted by modern hands in the garden of the peristyle. There are clumps of papyrus, the strange mop-headed rush from the banks of the Nile, introduced into Italy as a botanical novelty after the conquest of Egypt; there are rose-bushes, of course; and also masses of shining ivy trained in the ancient Roman manner upon a cage of wicker-work fixed into the soil. As we watch the verdure-clad sunlit space there descends, delicately fluttering, one of those splendid pale yellow brimstone butterflies of the South with flame-coloured blushes on its wings, and after some moments of graceful hesitation, this new visitor settles upon the purple head of an iris bloom. With its vivid colouring and its quick movements the butterfly brings an atmosphere of life into the courtyard that was hitherto lacking. Its appearance too suggests the famous allegory, the unsolved riddle of human existence which so puzzled the divine Plato and the ancient philosophers of Athens and Syracuse. Here are we, the living men of to-day, watching the corpse of a departed world upon which the mystic symbol of Psyche has just alighted. Tempus breve est is the simple little truism that rises to our reflecting minds. Eighteen centuries between the Vettii and ourselves! They are gone like a flash, and we are amazed to note how little has our nature altered either for the better or the worse within that space of time, long enough if we measure its limit by the standard of history, trivial if we reckon it by the progress made in human ethics and human understanding. Surely there are lessons to be learned in the silent city; Pompeii, we realize, is not merely a heap of antique dross whence we can pick up precious grains of knowledge, but it is an oracle in itself, which, if properly consulted, will give us plain answers to our modern speculations, and will possibly reprove us for our conceited assumption of omniscience.



Still brilliant in their strong prevailing tints of black, yellow and vermilion are the decorative schemes which make a visit to the house of the Vettii of such supreme importance for those who wish to understand fully the artistic tastes of the Romans, and also their artistic limitations. If the contents of the Museum seem colourless and cold, and prove unsatisfying and disappointing, here the eye of the artist can feast upon the classical ornamentation which remains fairly fresh in spite of a dozen years of exposure to daylight. For this province of art is peculiarly associated with the opening years of the Empire, and Pompeii is naturally the chief place for its study, and in Pompeii the untouched Casa Nuova is all important for the student. According to Pliny, the inventor of this pleasing style of decoration was a certain Ludius, who flourished in the reign of Augustus, and first persuaded the Romans to embellish their flat wall-surfaces with designs of "villas and halls, artificial gardens, hedges, woods, hills, water basins, tombs, rivers, shores, in as great a variety as could be desired; figures sitting at ease, mariners, and those who, riding upon donkeys or in waggons, look after their farms; fishermen, snarers of birds, hunters and vine-dressers; also swampy passages before beautiful villas, and women borne by men who stagger under their burdens, and other witty things of this nature; finally, views of sea-ports, everything charming and suitable":—a fairly long and comprehensive list of subjects, truly, from which a patron might pick and choose, or an artist might execute!

Although the great architect Vitruvius strongly denounced this new striving after scenic effect and characterized it as petty and false, yet none can deny that these cheerful scenes with their bright colours and their agreeable if trivial subjects were singularly well adapted to improve the appearance of the bare narrow rooms, the meagre proportions of which seem to us absolutely incompatible with plain comfort, to say nothing of luxury. Space may be increased, so far as the eye is concerned, by an architectural or landscape painting ingeniously conceived, and thus the restricted rooms seem to obtain by means of this new system of decoration a wider expansion, and with it an increased sense of ease and lightness. The invention of Ludius became at once the fashion, the rage; and all Rome began to cover the walls of its narrow chambers with these novel designs, which had already found favour in Imperial circles. Campania, where the old Greek love for polychrome still lingered, was not slow in imitating the new taste of the Capital, so that Pompeii bears undoubted testimony to the popularity of this revolution in artistic ideas, which substituted a lighter freer method for the old conventional severity of treatment. Experts profess to trace—and none will endeavour to gainsay them—a marked difference between the frescoes executed before the earthquake of 63 and those undertaken subsequent to that date. The wall paintings of the first group, carried out when the art was comparatively novel, are superior in harmony of colour, in choice of themes and in technical finish to those which belong to the latter period, the sixteen years that intervened between the earthquake and the eruption of Vesuvius. From this circumstance it has been inferred, not without reason, that this particular house must have passed some time before the year 63 out of the possession of people of good taste into the hands of vulgarians, ignorant of the fundamental principles of art and anxious only to obtain what was startling and garish. As freedmen, the two Vettii would naturally belong to a class which was not remarkable for culture; nevertheless, they seem to have had the good sense to leave intact some of their predecessor's most cherished works of decoration, and for this exhibition of restraint we must feel duly grateful towards our dead-and-gone hosts, the maligned Vettii.

But it is not only for purposes of examining Roman internal decoration in situ that this art gallery of the Casa Nuova is available. Below the painted panels of the dining-room runs a long string of ornament, whereon are represented Cupids and Psyches engaged in the various occupations of Pompeian daily life. Full of dainty grace and of lively expression, these little winged figures initiate us into a number of the trades and customs of the ancients. For they are made to appear before us as goldsmiths, vine-dressers, makers and sellers of olive oil, dealers in wine, fullers of cloth, and as partakers in a dozen other scenes of town or country life. Where learned antiquaries had hitherto doubted and disputed, the discovery of the paintings of these celestial little mechanics and merchants helped to solve many a difficulty, for the secret of half the arts and crafts of Pompeii is revealed to us in this playful guise. Nor are the designs themselves contemptible from an artistic point of view; look how intent, for example, is the pose of the tiny jeweller working with a graver's tool upon the gold vessel before him; how steadily he bears himself at a task which requires at once strength of hand and delicacy of workmanship. Look again at the nervous pose of the pretty elf who is gingerly pouring wine out of a huge amphora, which he holds in his arms, into a shallow tasting cup offered by a brother Cupid. How thoroughly must the unknown artist have enjoyed the task of painting this frieze! How unfettered his fancy, as his brush glided smoothly and deftly over the carefully prepared wall-surface! Excellent, no doubt, he thought his work at the time of execution, but even the most conceited of Campanian artists could hardly have dreamed that these creations of his brush would still at the end of two thousand years be admired, commented upon and even reproduced in thousands, by a process he never dreamed of, for the benefit of citizens of nations as yet unborn or unforeseen.

As the spring evening softly steals over the city and the shadows of the colonnades lengthen, let us leave the silent halls and chambers of the Casa dei Vettii and turn our footsteps westward; and issuing out of the Gate of Herculaneum, let us traverse the famous Street of Tombs, that extends along the road leading to the sister buried city. In ancient times this was the Via Domitiana, a branch road of the Appian Way, and it formed the most frequented entrance into Pompeii. To Roman ideas, therefore, it was but natural that tombs should be erected alongside its borders, whilst the spirits of the passing and repassing crowds were in no wise affected by the memorials of death attending their exits and entrances. And with the surging human tide that was ever flowing in this thoroughfare the funeral processions must constantly have mingled, the wailing of the hired mourners rising sharply above the din of harsh voices, the creaking of clumsy wooden wheels and the braying of the heavily laden asses. Now over all reigns a decorous silence, such as we moderns deem fitting for a cemetery; only the hum of insects breaks the deep quiet of the atmosphere, nor are there any living creatures visible at this late hour save the bats which flit restlessly in and out of the weed-grown piles of brick or stone that once were stately monuments of wealth or piety. Above our heads the tall sombre cypresses shoot upward like gigantic spear-heads into the crystal-clear air, pointing heavenward like our own church spires in a rural English landscape. This Street of the Dead in the City of the Dead is in truth a solemn and a soothing spot; nor can we find its precincts melancholy, when we stand in the midst of such glorious scenery. For Monte Sant' Angelo towers to our left against the mellow evening sky, flecked with lines of peach-blossom cloud, whilst in front of us the dark form of Capri seems to float in a golden haze between firmament and ocean. Behind us the dark mass of the Mountain with its breath of ascending smoke seems like an eternal funeral pyre in honour of the Dead, who were spared the horrors of that fearful disaster which overwhelmed the living. Upon the broken tombs and altars the light from the setting sun falls with warm cheerful radiance, flushing stone and brick-work with a ruddy glow like jasper; whilst, high in the heavens above the cypress tops, the crescent moon prepares to turn to gold from silver.

Beati sunt mortui: here rest, we know, the priestess Mammia, the decemvir Aricius, Libella the aedile, and a host of other citizens with whose names the student or the lover of Pompeii is familiar. How many a time has this line of roadway rung with the sound of the last sad appeal, the thrice repeated valediction: "Vale, vale, vale! farewell until the day when Nature will allow us to follow thee!" How often have the wooden pyres flung up in these precincts their clouds of perfumed smoke into the clear air, now redolent with the aroma of yellow broom, of dewy thyme and of sweet marigolds! Perhaps it was amidst these lines of cypress-set tombs by the Herculaneum Gate that the poetic genius, whose verses were spurned by his own generation, composed his famous Ode to Naples, for in its opening lines Shelley tells us it was the aspect of the "city disinterred" that gave him inspiration:—

"Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptor's thought; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter-leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow, Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life...."

Tranquilly and slowly descends night upon the untenanted city, as one by one the stars begin to peep forth like chrysolites in the heavens, which have changed from azure to a deep indigo during the sunset hour. Amid chilly dews, to the sound of the evening bell from the distant church of Santa Maria di Pompeii, we hasten in the growing darkness from the Street of the Tombs towards our modest inn outside the Marine Gate, anticipating with delight a ramble in the city in the freshness of the coming morning.



CHAPTER IV

VESUVIUS: THE STORY OF THE MOUNTAIN

The first appearance of Vesuvius, whether viewed from the deck of a steamer entering the Bay of Naples or espied from the window of a railway carriage on the main line running southward from Rome, makes an impression that will linger for ever in the memory. It is open to argument which is the more striking of the two experiences: the Mountain rising proudly from the deep blue waters into the paler shade of the upper air, or its graceful broken contour seen from the landward side to the north across the green fertile plains of the Campagna Felice. From a long acquaintance with both ways of approaching Naples, we are inclined to prefer the latter view. Travelling in an express train from Rome we find ourselves whirled suddenly, by magic as it were, into the atmosphere of the South, when with the sight of the domes and towers of Capua, the ancient capital of Campania the Prosperous, we first note the presence of orange trees and hedges of aloe, of white lupin crops and clumps of prickly pear, and we feel we are nearing Naples with "its burning mountain and its tideless sea," so that we eagerly strain our eyes in a southerly direction to catch our first glimpse of Vesuvius, with whose shape and history we have been so familiar since our childhood's days. At length we perceive its double summit, with smoke tranquilly issuing from the cone and obscuring the clarity of the air, and as we hurry forward towards our destination, through the plains studded with elm-trees festooned with vines, we have the satisfaction of observing its form grow larger and more distinct in outline.

On our arrival at Naples, in course of time we grow more intimately acquainted with the peculiar attractions of "the Mountain," as the Neapolitans always designate their treacherous but fascinating neighbour, of whose near existence they have every reason to be proud, for certainly Vesuvius, though barely as lofty as Ben Nevis, is to us westerns the most famous mountain upon earth. Regarding Vesuvius both from the land and the sea, we note that it rises in solitary majesty from an extended base some thirty miles in circumference, and that it sweeps upwards in graceful curving lines until at a distance of about 3000 feet from sea level its summit is cleft into two peaks; that to the north being a rocky ridge which catches our eye as we gaze eastward from the heights of Sant' Elmo or the Corso at Naples, the other point being the actual cone of the volcano itself. The upper part of the Mountain has in fact two aspects; in other words, Vesuvius is double, being composed of the ridge of Monte Somma to the north, 3760 feet in height, which is pre-historic; and the ever-shifting modern dome of Vesuvius to the south, which is about 4000 feet high. We say "about" purposely, for Vesuvius proper sometimes over-tops, sometimes equals, and sometimes even crouches under its immovable sister-peak, according to the effect produced by volcanic action. Monte Somma, which is one of the everlasting hills, is the parent, and Vesuvius is the child, born but yesterday from a geological point of view, for it is not so old as the Christian era;—"it is a variable heap thrown up from time to time, and again, not seldom, by a greater effort of the same force, tossed away into the air, and scattered in clouds of dust over far-away countries. Thus it has happened often, in the course of these variations of energy, that Vesuvius has risen to a conical height exceeding that of Somma by 500 or 600 feet, and again, the top has been truncated to a level as low as Somma, or even as much below that mountain as we now behold it above."(3)

To understand the story of the Mountain, therefore, it is necessary for us to travel back in retrospect to ancient Roman days. In the first place, however, one word as to its present name that we use to-day, for all are familiar with Vesuvius, but comparatively few, until they visit Naples, have heard mention made of Monte Somma. The name of Vesuvius, then, though strictly applicable only to the volcanic and modern portion of the Mountain, is not a recent appellation; on the contrary, it is probably of far more ancient origin than Mons Summanus by which the whole was known to the Romans. The point is by no means unimportant, for etymologists derive Vesuvius from the Syriac "Vo Seevev, the abode of flame," thereby proving to us that whatever opinions may have been held as to the nature of the Mountain in the century preceding the Christian era, its volcanic nature must have been perfectly well understood by those who gave it this suggestive title in a more remote age. But the secret locked up in Mons Summanus was not altogether unsuspected by the Roman scientists. Strabo, the geographer, writing about thirty years before the birth of Christ, made a careful examination of the crest of Mons Summanus, then a saucer-shaped hollow surrounded by a steep rocky edge and occupied by a flat plain covered with cinders and void of grass, although the flanks of the Mountain were extraordinarily fertile. From what he saw during his visit, Strabo conjectured the Mountain to be an extinct volcano, in which surmise he was destined to be proved partly in the right and partly in the wrong; whilst Vitruvius, the famous architect of the Emperor Augustus, "who found Rome of brick and left it of marble," as well as Tacitus the historian, shared the same opinion. About a century and a half before the first recorded eruption in 79, Mons Summanus figures prominently in Roman history as the scene of a curious incident during the Servile War, so that in the pages of the old chronicler Florus we obtain an interesting description—especially interesting because it was not given for scientific purposes—of the condition of the mountain top at that period. The brave gladiator Spartacus and his intrepid band of revolted slaves, seeking a place of safety from the pursuing Roman legions, not very wisely selected the top of this isolated peak, which, although affording a good position of defence and possessing a wide outlook over the Campanian plain, had only one narrow passage in its rocky rim to serve as entrance or outlet. Followed hither by the Roman forces and caught like rats in a trap, Spartacus and his men were doomed either to be reduced by starvation, or else to run the gauntlet of the sole narrow exit, which the Senate's commander, Clodius Glabrus, was already guarding. The story of Spartacus' escape from his terrible dilemma is told in the history of Florus, and repeated with further details by Plutarch in his Life of Crassus.

"Clodius the Praetor, with three thousand men, besieged them in a mountain, having but one narrow and difficult passage, which Clodius kept guarded; all the rest was encompassed with broken and slippery precipices, but upon the top grew a great many wild vines: they cast down as many of these boughs as they had need of, and twisted them into ladders long enough to reach from thence to the bottom, by which, without any danger, all got down save one, who stayed behind to throw them their arms, after which he saved himself with the rest."

A dozen learned statements of a scientific nature as to the ancient appearance and slumbering condition of the Mountain could not impress our imagination more vividly with its subsequent natural changes than the account of this episode of Spartacus and his handful of rebels, beleaguered by Clodius within the very crater of the volcano. We can see the Mountain in the last years of the Roman Republic before us, with its truncated cone encircled by a low rampart of rock half hidden by wild vine, ivy, eglantine, honeysuckle and all the creeping plants whose tough trailing stems enabled the besieged gladiators to effect their escape from the snare into which they had unwittingly fallen. We can understand from this event how utterly remote was the idea of any upheaval of nature to the dwellers on these shores, whose ancestors remembered the crest of the mountain as the scene of a military operation.

The first warning of a coming eruption after unnumbered centuries of quiet was given by a series of earthquakes which did an immense amount of damage at Herculaneum and Pompeii; yet in a district which had from time immemorial been subject to similar convulsions of nature, the shocks, though unusually distressing and destructive to life and property, were evidently unconnected in the popular mind with their true cause: the reawakening to life of the mountain overhead. The mischief done by the earthquakes was accordingly repaired as quickly as possible, and the normal course of life was resumed until the terrific and wholly unexpected outbreak of August 24th 79, during the reign of the Emperor Titus. Of this, the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius, we are exceptionally fortunate in possessing the testimony of a credible eye-witness, who was no less a personage than Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, better known to the modern world as Pliny the Younger, who wrote two lengthy letters to Tacitus on the subject of this event, the first describing the fate of his uncle, the Elder Pliny, most eminent of Roman naturalists, who perished during this period of terror; and the second containing a more detailed account of the eruption itself. For it so happened—luckily for posterity—that at the time of this sudden outburst of Mons Summanus, the Elder Pliny was in command of the Roman fleet at Misenum on the Bay of Naples, where his young nephew (who was also his adopted son) was living with his mother in a villa. "On the 24th of August," writes Pliny the Younger some eleven years after the event he is about to describe, "about one in the afternoon, my mother desired my uncle to observe a cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. He had just returned from taking the benefit of the sun, and after bathing himself in cold water, and taking a slight repast, was retired to his study. He immediately arose and went out upon an eminence, from whence he might more distinctly view this very uncommon appearance. It was not at that distance discernible from what mountain this cloud issued, but it was found afterwards to ascend from Mount Vesuvius. I cannot give a more exact description of its figure than by resembling it to that of a pine-tree, for it shot up to a great height in the form of a trunk, which extended itself on the top into a sort of branches, occasioned, I imagine, either by a sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which decreased as it advanced upwards, or the cloud itself being pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in this manner; it appeared sometimes bright, and sometimes dark and spotted, as it was more or less impregnated with earth and cinders. This extraordinary phenomenon excited my uncle's philosophical curiosity to take a nearer view of it." The nephew then proceeds to relate how his uncle sailed by way of Retina, the port of Herculaneum, to Stabiae, where he met with his second in command, one Pomponianus. Meanwhile the Younger Pliny, who had declined to accompany his uncle's expedition on the plea of having to pursue the studies with which as a hard-working youth of seventeen he was evidently engrossed, became alarmed during the night for the Elder Pliny's safety. His own and his mother's terrible experiences are vividly portrayed in the second letter, which, at the historian's special request, the Younger Pliny wrote to Tacitus in later years.

"When my uncle had started, I spent such time as was left on my studies—it was on their account, indeed, that I had stopped behind. Then followed the bath, dinner and sleep, this last disturbed and brief. There had been noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which had caused, however, but little fear, because it is not unusual in Campania. But that night it was so violent, that one thought everything was being not merely moved, but absolutely overturned. My mother rushed into my chamber; I was in the act of rising, with the same intention of awaking her, should she have been asleep. We sat down in the open court of the house, which occupied a small space between the buildings and the sea. And now—I do not know whether to call it courage or folly, for I was but in my eighteenth year—I called for a volume of Livy, read it as if I were perfectly at leisure, and even continued to make some extracts which I had begun. Just then arrived a friend of my uncle, who had lately come to him from Spain; when he saw that we were sitting down—that I was even reading—he rebuked my mother for her patience, and me for my blindness to the danger. Still I bent myself as industriously as ever over my book. It was now seven o'clock in the morning, but the daylight was still faint and doubtful. The surrounding buildings were now so shattered, that in the place where we were, which though open was small, the danger that they might fall on us was imminent and unmistakable. So we at last determined to quit the town. A panic-stricken crowd followed us.... We saw the sea retire into itself, seeming, as it were, to be driven back by the trembling movement of the earth. The shore had distinctly advanced, and many marine animals were left high and dry upon the sands. Behind us was a dark and dreadful cloud, which, as it was broken with rapid zig-zag flashes, revealed behind it variously shaped masses of flame; these last were like sheet lightning, though on a larger scale.... It was not long before the cloud that we saw began to descend upon the earth and cover the sea. It had already surrounded and concealed the island of Capreae, and had made invisible the promontory of Misenum. My mother besought, urged, even commanded me to fly as best I could; 'I might do so,' she said, 'for I was young; she, from age and corpulence, could move but slowly, but would be content to die, if she did not bring death upon me.' I replied that I would not seek safety except in her company; I clasped her hand and compelled her to go with me. She reluctantly obeyed, but continually reproached herself for delaying me. Ashes now began to fall—still, however, in small quantities. I looked behind me; a dense dark mist seemed to be following us, spreading itself over the country like a cloud. 'Let us turn out of the way,' I said, 'whilst we can still see, for fear that, should we fall in the road, we should be trodden under foot in the darkness by the throngs that accompany us.' We had scarcely sat down when night was upon us,—not such as we have seen when there is no moon, or when the sky is cloudy, but such as there is in some closed room where the lights are extinguished. You might hear the shrieks of women, the monotonous wailing of children, the shouts of men. Many were raising their voices, and seeking to recognise by the voices that replied, parents, children, husbands or wives. Some were loudly lamenting their own fate, others the fate of those dear to them. Some even prayed for death, in their fear of what they prayed for. Many lifted their hands in prayer to the gods; more were convinced that there were now no gods at all, and that the final endless night of which we have heard had come upon the world.... It now grew somewhat light again; we felt sure that this was not the light of day, but a proof that fire was approaching us. Fire there was, but it stopped at a considerable distance from us; then came darkness again, and a thick, heavy fall of ashes. Again and again we stood up and shook them off; otherwise, we should have been covered by them, and even crushed by the weight. At last the black mist I had spoken of seemed to shade off into smoke or cloud, and broke away. Then came genuine daylight, and the sun shone out with a lurid light, such as it is wont to have in an eclipse. Our eyes, which had not yet recovered from the effects of fear, saw everything changed, everything covered deep with ashes as if with snow. We returned to Misenum, and after refreshing ourselves as best we could, spent a night of anxiety in mingled hope and fear. Fear, however, was still the stronger feeling; for the trembling of the earth continued, while many frenzied persons, with their terrific predictions, gave an exaggeration that was even ludicrous to the calamities of themselves and of their friends. Even then, in spite of all the perils which we had experienced, and which we still expected, we had not a thought of going away till we could hear news of my uncle."(4)

As to the fate of the Elder Pliny, it seems that the old man had been obliged together with his friends and servants to fly from the villa at Stabiae where he was resting. The sea being too agitated to allow of an embarkation, the fugitives turned their steps towards the slopes of Mons Gaurus, the present Monte Sant' Angelo, with pillows bound over their heads to serve as protection against the showers of hot cinders that were falling thickly on all sides. At length the famous old writer, who was somewhat plethoric and unwieldy, sank exhausted to the ground, never to rise again, and shortly expired in an attack of heart failure, induced by the unusual excitement and fatigue he had lately been called upon to endure. At any rate, it appears fairly certain that the Elder Pliny did not perish, as is still sometimes asserted, by the direct effects of the eruption, but rather through an ordinary collapse of nature—syncope, perhaps. Three days later his body was found lying not far from Stabiae by his grief-stricken nephew, who describes his uncle's corpse as looking "more like that of a sleeping than of a dead man."

This then was the first, as it was also the most violent, of the many outbreaks of Vesuvius which our own age has witnessed, and with this eruption of 79 in the reign of Titus, the Mountain, as we have already said, greatly altered its shape. More than half the rim of the ancient crater that had enclosed Spartacus and his men less than two hundred years before had been torn away and destroyed, its remaining portion on the landward side retaining the old name of Mons Summanus. Between this remnant of the old wall of the crater and the scene of wreckage on the southern face of the Mountain, there now appeared the great cleft, the horse-shoe shaped valley called the Atrio del Cavallo, which separates the two peaks of the whole summit. A fragment only of the original crater, known as the Pedimentina, still remains on the seaward side above Torre del Greco. From that terrible day, so vividly described by the Younger Pliny, to our own times, a period stretching over 1800 years, a vast number of eruptions, great and small, have been enumerated, for owing to the nearness of Vesuvius to one of the largest cities in Europe, every incident connected with its activity has been carefully noted, at least since the time of the Renaissance. Out of the many upheavals we propose to select the eruptions of 1631 and 1779, as being amongst the most significant.

Ever since an outburst in the year 1500, the Mountain appears to have lapsed into a remarkable condition of quietude, even of apparent extinction, for over a century and a quarter, during which period, it may be remarked, the Sicilian volcano of Etna was unusually active. Once more the summit of Vesuvius was beginning to assume the form it had borne in the days previous to the overthrow of Pompeii; the riven crater was becoming filled with dense undergrowth and even with forest trees, amidst which wild boar made their lairs and were occasionally hunted. The learned Abate Giulio Braccini, whose account of the eruption of 1631 is the most graphic and accurate we possess, explored the crater shortly before the outbreak of the volcano, but found little to suggest any idea of an approaching convulsion. He reckoned the deep depression occupying the crest of the mountain to be about five miles in circumference, and to take about a thousand paces of walking so as to reach the lowest point within its area. He remarked abundance of brushwood on its sides, and observed cattle grazing peacefully upon the open grassy patches in the midst of the over-grown space. A deep crack, however, ran from end to end of the whole crater, which allowed persons so minded to descend amidst rocks and boulders to a large plain below the surface, whereon Braccini found three pools of hot steamy water, of a saline and sulphureous taste. Such was the tranquil aspect of the Mountain as surveyed by the Abate Braccini in the first half of the seventeenth century; to men of science signs of latent energy were certainly not wanting, yet to the ignorant, careless peasants of the hill-side and the scarcely less ignorant dwellers of the towns on the seashore, the state of repose in which the Mountain had continued for four or five generations suggested no fears or suspicions. Tilling of vineyards, building of new houses, sinking of wells, went on apace as cheerfully as though an eruption were an impossibility, till certain unmistakable portents that occurred towards the close of the year 1631 roughly dissipated this spell of fancied security. Earthquakes, more or less severe, began at this time to be felt along the whole of the volcanic line stretching from Ischia to the eastern slopes of Vesuvius; the plain within the crater of the Mountain began to heave and rise in an alarming fashion, and the water in all the local wells sank mysteriously below ground. The signs of some impending disaster coming from the heights above were too strongly marked to be lightly disregarded; the idea of a volcanic convulsion, though by this time a long-distant and vague memory, became so terrifying to the dwellers on the mountain's flanks and in Torre del Greco, Resina and the various towns that line the seaward base of the Mountain, that the majority of the people removed themselves and their property with all speed to places of safety. Nevertheless, despite the warnings given by Nature and also by men of science and the royal officials, many remained behind in their houses, and in consequence perished, to the immense number, it is surmised, of 18,000. On the morning of Wednesday, December 16th, the long threatened eruption burst forth in earnest upon an expectant world. Amidst crashes like prolonged volleys of artillery the people of Naples and the surrounding district beheld the terrible pine-tree of smoke and ashes, described centuries ago by Pliny, ascend from the south-western side of the summit of the Mountain, veiling the sky for miles around, and so charged with electricity, that many were even killed by the ferilli, or lightning flashes, that darted from the smoking mass. The spectacle of the ominous pine-tree was at once followed by a terrific rumbling and an ejection of lava, which after flowing down the southern flank in several streams finally reached the sea, making the waters hiss and boil at the moment of contact. Slowly but surely these relentless red-hot rivers of lava crept like serpents along the hill-side, destroying vineyard and garden, cottage and chapel, on their downward path. Resina shared the fate of its ancient forerunner Herculaneum, whilst Torre del Greco and Portici suffered severely, as we can see to-day by noting the great masses of lava flung on to the strand at various points. To add to the universal confusion of Nature, the sea, which had now become extraordinarily tempestuous, probably owing to some submarine earthquake-shock, suddenly retreated half a mile from the coast, and then as suddenly returned in a tidal wave more than a hundred feet beyond its normal limits. Such were the main features of the second great eruption of Vesuvius, wherein the ashes ejected by the Mountain were wafted by the wind beyond the Adriatic, to the Greek islands and even to Constantinople itself.



From this date onward the Mountain became very active in contrast with its previous condition of lethargy, and throughout the whole of the eighteenth century there were frequent eruptions, many of them on a vast scale. All these outbursts have been carefully recorded and commented upon, for naturally the scientists of a great city like Naples were intensely interested in the passing phases of their own volcano. During the latter half of this century all the phenomena have been described for us by Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador at the Court of the Two Sicilies, the versatile diplomatist who eventually married the beautiful but frail Emma Hart. During his long period of residence in Naples, Sir William made no fewer than fifty-eight explorations of the crater alone, besides carefully studying every peculiarity visible upon the sides of the Mountain. He was, of course, a close observer of the great eruptions of 1766-7, and also of the still greater convulsion of 1779, which, strangely enough, occurred on the seventeenth centenary of the awakening of the Mountain from its pre-historic slumbers. On this occasion, Hamilton, accompanied by a Mr Bowdler of Bath, had the temerity to track the streams of flowing lava to their hidden source by walking over the rough unyielding crust of stones and earth that had formed upon the surface of the molten stream, as it slowly trickled down hill at the rate of about a mile an hour. The adventurous pair of Englishmen were successful in their quest, and Sir William thus describes the fountain-head of the fiery streams that he found a quarter of a mile distant from the top of the cone.

"The liquid and red-hot matter bubbled up violently, with a hissing and crackling noise, like that which attends the playing off of an artificial firework; and by the continued splashing up of the vitrified matter, a kind of arch, or dome, was formed over the crevice from whence the lava issued; it was cracked in many parts, and appeared red-hot within, like a heated oven. This hollowed hillock might be about fifteen feet high, and the lava that ran from under it was received into a regular channel, raised upon a sort of wall of scoriae and cinders, almost perpendicularly, of about a height of eight or ten feet, resembling much an ancient aqueduct."

Some days later, at midnight on August 7th, a veritable fountain of red fire shot up from the crest of Vesuvius, illuminating all the surrounding country; and on the following night a still more marvellous sheet of flame appeared, hanging like a fiery veil between heaven and earth, and reaching to a height (so Sir William Hamilton guessed) of about 10,000 feet above the summit, affording a wonderfully grand but terrible spectacle. This great curtain of fiery particles, accompanied by inky black clouds from which were darting continual flashes of lightning, was reflected clearly on the smooth surface of the Bay, delighting the Court and the scientific world of Naples, but inspiring, as may well be imagined, the mass of superstitious inhabitants with the direst alarm. The theatres were closed and the churches were opened; above the rumblings and explosions of the agonised volcano could be heard the tolling of the bells. Maddened by terror, the Neapolitan mob rushed to the Archbishop's palace to demand the immediate production of the holy relics of St Januarius, the protector of the city, and on this request being refused, set fire to the entrance gates, a forcible argument that soon persuaded his Eminence of the propriety of the people's demand. Thereupon the head of the Saint, enclosed in its case of solid silver, was accordingly borne in solemn procession with wailing and repentant crowds behind it to an improvised shrine, hung with garlands, on the Ponte della Maddalena, at the extreme eastern boundary of the city. Nor was the confidence reposed by the Neapolitans in their patron Saint misplaced, for except from the stifling smells and the dense rain of ashes, the terror-stricken capital suffered not a whit, whilst the general alarm inspired its inhabitants with a revival of religious fervour which was by no means insalutary. As usual, the old cynical proverb was once more justified:—_Napoli fa gli peccati, e la _Torre gli paga_, for of course poor Torre del Greco was grievously affected by the lava streams. In this case, however, even Torre del Greco and Resina did not fare so badly as did the towns on the northern slopes of Monte Somma, a district which is of course perfectly immune from lava inundations owing to the protecting rocky ridge of the Atrio del Cavallo. But it seems that the great veil of clouds and fire, extending some thousands of feet from the crest of the mountain to the heavens above, was swayed by a chance current of air, so that its component red-hot dust, ashes and stones were emptied in one fatal shower upon the northern flank of the Mountain. Whole villages were ruined, hundreds of acres of vines and crops were scorched and burned; the smiling peaceful hillside was in a few minutes converted into a parched wilderness. Ottajano, a large town of some 12,000 inhabitants, was the place most seriously injured by this wholly unexpected rain of destruction, for a tempestuous fall of red-hot stones, some of immense size, and a shower of ashes killed hundreds of the terrified and suffocating citizens, and blocked up the streets with smoking debris to a depth of four feet.

Of the recent eruptions of Vesuvius, which have been pretty frequent during the latter half of last century, that of April 1872, so carefully recorded by Professor Palmieri, who in spite of imminent danger never abandoned his post in the Observatory, is the most notable. It is remembered also owing to the catastrophe whereby some twenty persons out of a large crowd of strangers, who had imprudently ascended to the Atrio del Cavallo to get a closer view of the phenomenon, were suddenly caught by the lava stream and enfolded in its burning clutches. For if ignorance and superstition seem to make the poor fisherman or peasant unduly alarmed on such occasions, curiosity and self-confidence are sometimes apt to lead the educated or scientific into unnecessary peril. Naples itself was once more alarmed in 1872, so that the relics of St Januarius at the furious demand of the populace were again brought forth in solemn procession, and exposed towards the face of the Mountain on the Ponte della Maddalena. Thousands of quaking mortals gathered near this spot, joining in the chanting of the priests and watching with pallid anxious faces the fiery currents of lava slowly trickling down the south-western flank of Vesuvius towards the city itself. A certain number of attendants meanwhile were engaged in perpetually brushing away from the image of the Saint, from his improvised altar, and from its votive garlands the ever-accumulating mantle of grey dust, and it is scarcely to be wondered at that a certain cool-headed Neapolitan artist, Il Vaccaro, should all this time have been busily engaged in painting so characteristic and highly picturesque a scene. Within the churches, and particularly in St Januarius' own cathedral, enormous crowds of hysterical men and women had collected, loudly bewailing their past sins and imploring the Divine mercy, for

"E belle son le supplice Pompe di penitenza, in alto lutto."

Again the historic palladium proved effectual, and the city, that was never for a moment in danger, was once more saved! Naples received no damage beyond a temporary panic and a heavy fall of ashes, which covered every street and flat surface within the town to a depth of some inches and which it took many days of enforced labour to remove. Again it was the poor confiding vine-dressers and tillers of the Vesuvian soil who suffered in this upheaval, for though the loss of life was very slight indeed, yet numerous houses, fields and vineyards were totally destroyed and many more were injured. Truly it is a maxim well proven by time:—Napoli fa gli peccati, e Torre gli paga.



Such, told baldly and briefly, is the history of the Mountain, which forms the most conspicuous feature of the Bay of Naples and dominates one of the fairest and most populous districts on the face of the globe. But it does not take long to make visitors to the Neapolitan shore understand the mysterious charm, not unmixed with awe, and the all-pervading influence of Vesuvius. Go where we will within the circuit of the Bay of Naples and even outside it, we are never out of sight of the obtruding Mountain and its smoky wreath. We begin to feel that the Mountain is an animated thing, that the destiny of the Parthenopean shore is locked up in the breast of the Demon who has his dwelling within its red-hot caverns. So sudden are the actions, and so capricious the moods of this Monster of the Burning Mountain, that no one can tell the day, or even the hour, wherein he will give us an exhibition of his fiery temper, though, it is true, in the case of violent eruptions he is kind enough to afford timely warning by means of a succession of earthquakes and other signals almost equally alarming. His Majesty's presence is felt everywhere; each morning as we open our window upon the dazzling waters of the Bay, we note with relief his tranquil aspect; each night, ere we retire to sleep, we find ourselves inevitably drawn to watch the glare thrown by the molten lava within the crater upon the thick vapour overhead. The nightly expectation of this aerial bonfire possesses an extraordinary fascination for the stranger. Some times the lurid glare is continuous; at other times there are long intervals of waiting, and even then the reflected light is very faint, a mere speck of reddish glow in the surrounding blackness, gone in the twinkling of an eye. But, strangely enough, one grows to understand the Mountain better from a distance and by watching its moods from afar, like the Neapolitans themselves, who never ascend to probe its mysteries, except a few vulgar guides and touts who batten on the curiosity of the foreigner.

On clear windless days the intermittent clouds of vapour sent up from the crater assume the most fantastic shapes—trees, ships, men, birds, animals—ever changing like the forms of Proteus. It would seem as if the Spirit of the Mountain were idly amusing himself, like a child blowing bubbles, or a vendor at a fair-stall carving out little figures of gingerbread to tickle the fancy of country boys and girls. The clouds so formed sometimes cause amusement by their uncanny shapes, but not unfrequently they inspire alarm. The superstitious peasant of the Paduli, looking up suddenly from his work amidst the early peas or tomatoes, beholds against the blue sky a vague nebulous form that to his untutored mind suggests a gigantic crucifix upheld in mid-air above the Mountain, and he crosses himself devoutly ere he bends down to earth once more to his work in the rich dark soil. "Such stuff as dreams are made of" appear in truth the weird phantoms that the sly Demon of Vesuvius flings up into the pure aether, and if credulous mankind likes to draw inferences for good or bad from these unsubstantial creations of his fancy, he laughs to himself with a hollow reverberating sound. It must, however, have been in the true spirit of prophecy on the occasion of King Manfred's birth, that the genius of the Mountain despatched two cloud-forms into the sky (so the unabashed old chroniclers gravely relate), one having the appearance of a warrior armed cap-a-pie, and the other that of a fully vested priest. The affrighted gazers below, struck with the strange phenomenon, beheld the two figures sway towards each other and finally become locked together in deadly aerial combat, until all resemblance to human shape had vanished from the pair. Then, after an interval of time, men perceived the cloudy mass once more assume a mortal shape, and a huge towering priest with flowing robes and tiara on head was left in solitary and victorious possession of the sky. The Churchman had swallowed up the soldier; the Pontiff had vanquished the King; it was a true premonition of the fatal field of Benevento, which saw the ultimate triumph of the Papal over the Imperial cause.

But if the near presence of the burning mountain has tended to make the inhabitants of its immediate zone the slaves of superstitious awe, the disasters of generations have likewise imbued them with a spirit of fatalism, that appears even stronger than their outward show of credulity. Life is not so sweet nor so dear apparently to these children of the South, but that they can afford to take their chance of disturbance or death with a true philosophic calm. The fisher-folk and maccaroni workers of Resina, Portici and the two Torres have, it is true, little to lose; a small boat can at the last moment easily convey their families and slender stock of household furniture to a place of temporary safety, and when the danger is over-past, the same shallop can bring back the refugees and their belongings. But with the husbandmen the case is different. Not only has he to fear the actual stream of lava, which may or may not overwhelm his house and farm in its slow inevitable course, but there are also the showers of hot ashes and of scalding water that will frizzle up in a few seconds every green blade and leaf upon his tiny domain, for which he pays an enormous rental, sometimes as much as L12 sterling an acre. Yet the contadino takes his chances with a seraphic resignation that we do not usually attribute to the southern temperament. After the eruption of 1872, which covered the rich Paduli with a deep coating of grey ashes, a young peasant girl was heard deploring the loss of her carefully tended gourds and melons; "Oh come volimme fa? Addio, pummarole! addio, cucuzzielle!" whereupon an older woman, witnessing these useless tears, upbraided her with the words: "Do not complain, child, lest worse befall you!" And indeed the whole population of the Paduli, instead of lamenting over their scorched and spoiled crops, were jubilant at the thought that the havoc done was only partial, not irrevocable;—a few months of incessant labour, said they, would bring back the holdings to their former state of perfection. Yet a general opinion prevails among foreigners that the Neapolitans are lazy, thriftless and helpless! They indeed rely to a certain extent upon St Januarius to protect their crops from the efforts of Nature, over which, they argue, the Saint is more likely to possess control than his human applicants, but when once the fatal shower of ashes has fallen, they do not expect "San Gennaro" to set their injured acres to rights again, but with a rare patience turn to the task themselves. A more industrious, and at the same time a more capable and practical race of agriculturists than the tillers of the slopes of Vesuvius, it would be hard to match. And thus in the sunshine of the south, yet ever under the shadow of death and destruction, dwell many thousands of human beings, as unconcerned as though Vesuvius were miles and miles away. Not unconscious, but fully conscious of their doom, the victims of the Mountain toil and moil upon the fertile farms (in many cases risen phoenix-like from their own ashes) that grow the early beans and tomatoes, the egg-plants and the white fennel roots (finocchi) that well-fed travellers devour in the hotels of Naples. Or else they tend the vines that yield the generous Lagrima Christi, of which imprudent and heated visitors drink long draughts unmixed with water, and then complain of ensuing languor and pains beneath their waistcoats. Luscious, yet seductive wine! Counsellor of moderation after a first experience of excess! Essence of Vesuvius, whose strange name so puzzled the poet Chiabrera!

"Chi fu de' contadini il si indiscreto, Ch' a sbigottir la gente Diede nome dolente Al vin' che sovra gli altri il cuor fa lieto? Lagrima dunque appellerassi un riso Parte di nobilissima vendemmia?"

("Who was the jesting countryman, I cry, That gave so fearsome and so dour a name To that choice vintage, which of all think I Most warms the heart's blood with its genial flame? Smiles, and not tears, the epithet should be Of juice wrung from so fair a vinery.")

* * * * * *

Scarcely had the above pages been written, than the Mountain, which had been drowsing for more than thirty years, suddenly awakened to give appalling evidence of its latent activity and powers of mischief. The eruption of April 1906 has, in fact, surpassed all previous outbursts within living memory, and it may probably be reckoned amongst the most violent of all hitherto recorded. Many of the details of this event doubtless remain fresh in the memory, and in any case the sad condition of numerous towns and villages, and of the beautiful Vesuvian districts, the paesi ridenti as the Neapolitans affectionately term these fertile lands, will serve for some years to come as a sinister and ever-present reminder of the horrors of the past and of the dread possibilities of the future. All vegetation for miles around the volcano has been injured or destroyed, for not only was the Mountain itself covered deep with grit and ashes, but the streets and gardens of Naples, the luxuriant plain of Sorrento, and even the heights of Capri, twenty miles distant across the Bay, were shrouded in a funereal mantle of the greyish-yellow dust that Vesuvius had flung into the air to let fall like a shower of parching and destructive rain upon the earth. How vast was the amount of matter ejected from the crater and scattered in this form over the surrounding country, we may judge from the scientific calculation that 315,000 tons fell in Naples alone! Everywhere appeared the same scenes of desolation, the same dreary tint, for so thickly had this aerial torrent of ashes descended, that buildings, trees and plants were completely hidden by it, the whole landscape suggesting the idea of a recent heavy fall of dirty-coloured snow. Paesi ridenti, indeed! It was a land of ugliness and mourning, a city of stifling air and of human terror.

A few days previous to the eruption, which began on April 5th, the island of Ustica, which lies some forty miles north of Palermo, had been visited by earthquake shocks of such violence that the Italian Government at last decided to remove the greater part of its population to the mainland, as well as the convicts attached to the penal settlements on the island. Scarcely had these manifestations ceased at Ustica, than Vesuvius began to show signs of increased activity; the supplies in the wells on the mountain sides began to fail, and there was observed a strong taste of sulphur in the drinking water; whilst—most dreaded phenomenon of all—the ever-active crater of Stromboli, that lies midway between Naples and Messina, suddenly lapsed into quiescence. We all know the subsequent story of the outbreak; of the thousands of fugitives flying into Naples or other places of refuge; of the utter destruction of houses and cultivated lands;—the doleful scenes of a Vesuvian eruption have been enacted and described time after time in the history of the Mountain, and there is every reason to suppose they will be repeated at intervals for centuries to come. The marvel is how human beings can calmly settle down and pass their lives so close to the jaws of the fire-spouting monster, and why an intelligent Government permits its subjects to dwell in places which are ever exposed to catastrophes such as that which we have just witnessed. Well, it is the natural temperament of the Vesuviani to be fatalistic, despite their religious fervour; and acts of legislature cannot force them to abandon their old deep-rooted notions; all that the Italian Government can do therefore is to stand ready prepared to help, when the upheaval does occur, as it inevitably must.

It is always a matter of speculation on these occasions as to what course the ejected lava will pursue; whose turn, of the many settlements on the southern slopes of the Mountain, will it be to suffer? This time it was Bosco-Trecase, a village above Torre Annunziata, that was devastated by the sinuous masses of incandescent matter, high as a house and broad as a river. Torre Annunziata itself, as also ruined Pompeii were threatened, but the red-hot streams of destruction mercifully stopped short of their expected prey. The story of horrors and panic in the overthrow of Bosco-Trecase is happily relieved by many a recorded incident of valour and unselfishness. The royal Carabinieri, that splendid body of mounted police, who in their cocked hats and voluminous cloaks appear as ornamental in times of quiet as they prove themselves useful in the stormy hours of peril, acquitted themselves, as usual, like heroes. It was they who guided away the trembling peasants before the advance of the lava, searching the doomed houses for sick and crippled, whom they carried on their shoulders to places of security. Working, too, with almost equal zeal and practical good sense were the Italian soldiers, who richly deserved the praise that their royal commander, the Duke of Aosta, subsequently bestowed upon them for their invaluable services rendered during these fearful days of darkness and danger. "Soldiers!" declared the Duke, in his address to the troops on April 23rd, "I have seen you calm and happy in the work of alleviating the misfortunes of others, and I put on record the praise you have won. By promptly appearing at the places distressed by the eruption, you have encouraged the people by your presence and your example; you have maintained order and have safe-guarded property. Helping the local authorities, and even in some instances filling their offices, you have carried out the most urgent and dangerous duties in order to save the houses and to keep clear the roads. In the spots most heavily afflicted you have lent your assistance in removing and caring for the injured, and in searching for and burying the dead you have given proofs of great self-sacrifice and reverence (pieta). Not a few of the refugees have obtained food and shelter in your barracks, and whole communities without means of existence have been provided by you with the necessaries of life. Everywhere and from all your conduct has gained you loud applause. Nevertheless, your task is not yet ended; continue at it out of love for your country and devotion to your King!"(5)

With such a reputation for kindness of heart and energy in time of need, no wonder that the Army is popular with all classes in Italy!

Nor did the King and Queen hold aloof from the scene of disaster, for they hurried from Rome at midnight of that terrible Palm Sunday on purpose to comfort the terror-stricken population. Victor-Emmanuel even penetrated in his motor-car as far as Torre Annunziata, in spite of the fumes of sulphur and the many difficulties in proceeding along roads clogged deep with volcanic dust and ashes. On another occasion the King and Queen paid a visit to the afflicted district of the slopes of Monte Somma, where Ottajano and San Giuseppe had been almost buried by the continuous falling of burning material from the crater. In fact, these localities suffered even more severely than the towns on the seaward face of the Mountain (Bosco-Trecase excepted), and at Ottajano hardly a house in the place remained intact at the close of the eruption, whilst the loss of human life was probably higher here than elsewhere. The Duke and Duchess of Aosta—he the king's cousin, and she the popular Princess Helene, daughter of the late Comte de Paris—were likewise indefatigable in their efforts to assist and reassure the demoralized population, and to make every possible arrangement for the feeding and housing of the numberless refugees and the tending of the injured in the hospitals of Naples. Equally valorous was the conduct of the great scientist, Professor Matteucci, who remained together with a few Carabinieri throughout all phases of the eruption at the Vesuvian Observatory, although in imminent peril of death amidst a deadly atmosphere of heat and sulphureous fumes.

It was on April 5th that the streams of burning lava first burst from the riven crater and made their way down the south-eastern slopes, destroying Bosco-Trecase and reaching to the very suburbs of Torre Annunziata. Pompeii itself was imperilled, and it is always well to remember that during an eruption this precious relic of antiquity may possibly be lost to the world. Meanwhile the rain of ashes and mud—formed by dust and hot water commingling—fell incessantly; 150,000 inhabitants of the Vesuvian districts fled in precipitate flight towards Naples, towards the shore, towards the hill country beyond the Sarno. It was truly a marvellous spectacle to observe the relentless stream of burning lava crushing irresistibly every opposing object in its fatal path. Onlookers at a distance could perceive the walls of houses bulging outward under pressure of the moving mass, until the roof collapsed in an avalanche of tiles upon the ground, whilst with a final crash the whole structure—cottage, farm, church or stately villa—succumbed to the overwhelming weight.

Many are the tales of courage and intrepidity; not a few, alas! are the stories of folly and cowardice that are related in connection with the eruption. It cannot be said that the population of Naples, where everybody was perfectly safe even if the atmosphere was unpleasant and the distant thunders of the Mountain reverberated alarmingly, comported itself with dignity or calm; and this criticism applies in particular to the hundreds of visitors—English, German, American and other forestieri—who besieged the railway station in frantic and indecent anxiety to remove themselves with all speed from the city. Some excuse might perhaps be found for the hysterical terror of the poor inhabitants of the Mergellina or the Mercato, who spent their time in wailing within the churches or in screaming for the public exhibition of the venerated relics of their patron Saint, which again on this occasion the Archbishop, nolens volens, was compelled by the mob to produce. But for the great mass of educated foreigners then filling the hotels and pensions of the place, it cannot be said that their conduct was edifying, particularly in face of the example set by the King and Queen of Italy. To add to the general panic prevailing in the city, the Neapolitans themselves were not unnaturally greatly exasperated by the serious accident which took place at the Central Market Hall near Monte Oliveto in the heart of the old town. Here, early one morning during the course of the eruption, the great roof of corrugated iron collapsed, killing many and frightening the whole of the populace, already sufficiently unnerved by recent events. That this catastrophe was due to the casual methods, amounting in this case to criminal neglect of plain duty, of the municipal authorities, who had neglected to sweep the accumulation of heavy volcanic ash from off the thin metal roof, none can deny; and this glaring example of public stupidity had of course a bad effect on the demoralized multitude, which threatened to grow unruly, as well as terrified. No, the graceless stampede of educated foreigners to the railway-station, the incompetence of the Municipality, and the behaviour of the Neapolitan crowd do not appear very creditable to the supposed enlightenment of the twentieth century. It had been confidently predicted that nearly fifty years of State education and liberal government would work wonders in dispelling the crass ignorance and the deep-seated superstition of the dwellers on the Bay of Naples. Yet, so far as can be judged from recent events, matters seem to have changed but little on these shores, for the mass of the population evidently preferred to pin its hope of safety to the miracle-working relics of San Gennaro, rather than to the reassuring messages of Professor Matteucci, sent from his post of undoubted peril on the mountain-side.

If the inhabitants of a great city, which was never seriously threatened with danger, should have acted thus, there is undoubtedly much excuse to be found for the Vesuviani themselves, whose houses and lives were certainly in danger from the devastating streams of lava. It was with a sigh and a smile that we learned how the good people of Portici attributed their escape from the fate of Bosco-Trecase to the direct interposition of a wonder-working Madonna enshrined in one of their own churches. For some days the town had been threatened, so that many were convinced of its impending doom, when happily at the last moment the expected fate was averted, as though by a miracle. And miracle it truly was in the eyes of the people of Portici, when it was observed that the snow-white hands of their popular Madonna had turned black in some mysterious manner during the night hours. What could be a simpler or easier deduction from this circumstance, than that Our Lady's Effigy, taking pity on its affrighted suppliants, had with its own hands pushed back the advancing mass of lava, and thus saved the town! Great was the joy, and equally great the gratitude, displayed by these poor souls at Portici, who at once organised a triumphal procession in honour of their prescient patroness "delle mani nere." Does not such an incident, we ask, lend a touch of picturesque medievalism to a modern scene of horror and darkness, exhibiting to us, as it does, the traits of a simple touching faith and of genuine human thankfulness?

Well, the great eruption of 1906 is over, and the inhabitants of the Vesuvian communes are once more settling down in their ruined homes, or their damaged farms and gardens. No doubt a new Bosco-Trecase will arise on the shapeless ruins of the old site, for fear of danger seems powerless to deter the outcast population from reoccupying its old haunts. Ottajano will be rebuilt, not for the first time, and its citizens will again trust to luck—and to St Januarius—for protection from the evil fate which has repeatedly overtaken their town. The two Torres, Resina, Portici, and the villages along the shore, have this time contrived to escape the lava streams, and though their buildings have been severely shaken, and even wrecked in many instances, the people will doubtless mend the cracks in their walls and place fresh tiles on the injured roofs. They are wise in their own generation, for the Mountain is not likely to burst forth again for another quarter of a century at least after so violent a fit, salvo complicazioni, of course, as the more cautious Italians themselves say. But another outburst is inevitable; and whose turn to suffer will it be then? Will it be Portici, or either of the Torres? Who knows?—and what dweller under Vesuvius to-day cares at this moment? "Under Vesuvius," but it is a new Vesuvius, for the tall cone which was so conspicuous a feature of the Bay of Naples has disappeared completely, and the summit of the volcano has been once more reduced to the level of Monte Somma. How many years, we wonder, will be required for the Mountain to raise for itself once more the tall pyre of ashes that it has itself demolished and flung on all sides to the winds? At any rate let us now look for a period of rest, a period of prosperity to recoup the disturbed denizens of these paesi gia ridenti for their heavy losses and terrible experiences. Speriamo.



CHAPTER V

THE CORNICHE ROAD FROM CASTELLAMARE TO AMALFI

It is without any feelings of regret that we learn of the non-existence of a railway line beyond Castellamare, so that our journey to Amalfi along the coast must be performed in the good old-fashioned manner of long-past vetturino days. Three skinny horses harnessed abreast are standing ready at the hotel door to draw our travelling chariot, each member of the team gorgeously decked with plumes of pheasant feathers in his head-gear and with many-coloured trappings, whilst on the harness itself appears in more than one place the little brazen hand, which is supposed to ensure the steed's safety from the dangers of any chance jettatore, the unlucky wight endowed with the Evil Eye. Nor is the swarthy picturesque ruffian who acts as our driver unprovided with a talisman in case of emergency, for we observe hanging from his heavy silver watch-chain the long twisted horn of pink coral, which is popularly supposed to catch the first baleful glance, and to act on the principle of a lightning-conductor, in deflecting the approaching danger from the prudent wearer of the coral trinket. Merrily to the sound of jingling bells and the deep-chested exhortations of our coachman do we bowl along the excellent road in the freshness of the morning air and light "through varying scenes of beauty ever led," for the Corniche road towards Amalfi is admitted to be one of the finest in the world. Following the serpentine curves above the cliffs, we have on our right hand the dazzling Mediterranean with classic capes and islands all flushed in the early sunshine, whilst above us on the left rise the steep fertile slopes of the Lactarian Hills. Convent and villa, cottage and farmhouse, peep out of embowering verdure, whilst our road is shaded in many places by the overhanging boughs of blossoming almond and loquat trees. The whole region is in truth a veritable garden of the Hesperides, where in the mild equable climate fruit and flowers ripen and bloom without a break throughout the rolling year.



"Tall thriving trees confess'd the fruitful mould; The verdant apple ripens here to gold; Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows, With deepest red the full pomegranate glows, The branches bend beneath the weighty pear, And silver olives flourish all the year; The balmy spirit of the western gale Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail. Each dropping pear another pear supplies, On apples apples, figs on figs arise; The same mild season gives the blooms to blow, The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow."

A lovely and a fertile scene it is indeed, and thoroughly typical of the peculiar charm of Southern Italy, wherein the rich well-tilled lands appear in striking contrast with the near-lying stony fallows and scrub-covered wastes.

Beneath the picturesque pile of Santa Maria a Pozzano, perched aloft above the roadway, we pass along the edge of the sea-girt precipice, rounding the Capo d'Orlando, until we reach the pretty little town of Vico Equense, with its churches and gay-coloured villas nestling amidst groves of olive and orange trees. Vico owes its prosperity in the first instance to the patronage of "Carlo il Zoppo," Charles the Dwarf, the lame son and heir of King Charles of Anjou, who founded a settlement and built a villa upon the site of the ancient Roman colony; and it was in the old royal demesne of the Angevins that the hand of the deformed king's daughter, the Princess Clementia, was demanded formally in marriage by the French monarch, Philip the Bold, who sought to marry her to his third son, Charles of Valois. The match between the young prince of France and his cousin, the Neapolitan princess, appeared suitable to all concerned in every respect save one; for it was well known that the King of Naples had been lame from his birth, and it could never be deemed fit for the expected heir of France to marry any but a perfectly sound and healthy bride. Now the Queen of Naples was too proud to accede to the hints of the French ladies, who evidently were most anxious to acquaint themselves with the satisfactory condition of her daughter's "walking members," though she went so far as to allow the maiden to appear before them clad only in a flowing robe of gossamer silk. The possible danger of losing her opportunity to become Queen of France proved, however, beyond the ambitious young lady's powers of endurance, and to the horror of her haughty mother and the delight of the foreign emissaries, the Princess Clementia then and there doffed her silken robes and appeared before all in the historic garb of Lady Godiva. A glance at the princess's form in puris naturalibus sufficed to convince the inquisitive Frenchwomen that no hereditary taint from Il Zoppo descended to his daughter; and accordingly the betrothal of the two young people was celebrated that very evening amidst the usual revels and feastings.

The clean cheerful town on the sheer limestone crags boasts a cathedral, wherein, so the guide-book informs us, we shall find the tomb of Filangieri, the great Italian jurist. But the building contains in reality far more stirring associations than those connected with a prominent lawyer. It is but a rococo structure of the usual Italian type, and its painted series of portraits of past bishops is by no means an uncommon complement of cathedral churches in the South. But here, amidst the long rows of indifferent portraits, we note an omission, a space that is occupied, not by a likeness but by a medallion, which represents a cherub with the forefinger of his right hand laid as a seal of silence upon the lips. Here-by indeed hangs a tale, obscure perhaps, but pathetic and human to the last degree. We all remember the broad frieze filled with Doges' faces which is carried round the great hall of the ducal palace in Venice, wherein the place assigned to the traitor, Marino Faliero, contains a black veil instead of the usual portrait. Here in little Vico Equense is to be found a somewhat similar incident, but with this important difference:—the bishop whose portrait is here omitted was the most worthy of remembrance of all his peers.

The crime of Monsignore Michele Natale, Bishop of Vico Equense, to which the silent cherub bears everlasting witness, was that of being a patriot and a Liberal (in the truest sense of that term) during the anxious times of the ill-fated Parthenopean Republic, that short-lived period of aristocratic government which was set up in self-defence by certain Neapolitan nobles, prelates and men of science after the abrupt departure of their cowardly King and Queen to Palermo. We all remember the terrible ending of that government: how the vile rabble-army of Cardinal Ruffo assaulted Naples; how the city capitulated to the Cardinal on the express condition that all life and property should be spared; and how Lord Nelson, refusing to recognise the terms that Ruffo himself had agreed to, and overruling the Cardinal's protests, treated the unhappy prisoners. The Bishop of Vico Equense was one of this band of martyrs, for he suffered death under circumstances of exceptional brutality on the morning of August 20th 1799, in the piazza in front of the church of the Carmine, together with two Neapolitans of noble rank, Giuliano Colonna and Gennaro Serra, and with the poetess, Eleonora Pimentel, a Portuguese by birth but the widow of a Neapolitan officer. All went nobly to their doom amidst the execrations of the demoralised bloodthirsty mob of lazzaroni, yelling at and insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back with no little difficulty by the royal troops from mutilating the corpses of women, bishops and princes. Monsignore Natale himself was hanged, and in his case the public executioner—"Masto Donato" as he was nick-named by the populace—gave vent to many pleasantries concerning the episcopal rank of his victim. Blindfolded and with the cord of infamy depending from his neck, the Bishop was led up to the fatal ladder amid deafening shouts of

"Viva la forca e Masto Donato; Sant' Antonio sia priato!"

On reaching the top of the gallows, the hangman made fast the rope to the cross-tree, and then an assistant (tirapiede) from below adroitly pushed the unseeing prisoner into space, catching on to his legs meanwhile, whilst "Masto Donato" himself adroitly leaped from the gallows-top upon the prelate's shoulder. With the hangman on his back, shouting aloud how much he was enjoying his ride upon a real bishop, and with the other ruffian clinging to his heels, Monsignore Natale swayed backwards and forwards amidst yells of execration and gratified hate on that hot August morning in front of the Church of the Carmine little more than one hundred years ago. His body was left on the gallows to be insulted by the mob throughout the long sweltering day, and then, stripped of all its clothing, was finally flung with other corpses of noble men and women into a charnel-house at Sant' Alessio al Lavinaio. Who it was that placed this quaint little memorial to the murdered prelate in his cathedral church we know not; but here the speechless yet eloquent cherub tells Natale's sad story of brutality and injustice to all who care to listen. Happily the spell of silence is at length broken, and the true history of that hateful era of crime, cruelty, lying, and intrigue is gradually being revealed; and the enemies of the Church in Italy learn with an astonishment, which is perhaps feigned, that in that glorious army of martyrs of 1799 more than one ecclesiastic of high rank suffered in the ill-starred and premature cause of Neapolitan liberty.

Crossing the little river Arco, we proceed uphill through the region of vines and olives, until we have passed the Punta di Scutolo, where begins our descent into that famous tract of country, the Piano di Sorrento, a plateau above the cliffs, some four miles in length by one in breadth. Poets of antiquity and bards of the Middle Ages alike have sung the delights of the Sorrentine Plain, and have painted in glowing colours of inspired verse its race of happy peasants, its fruitful fields and orchards, its luscious vines, its excellent flocks. Galen, the cunning old physician, recommended to his nervous patients what would now be termed a "rest cure" in these favoured regions; whilst the grateful Bernardo Tasso, father of the immortal Torquato, speaks of the capital of this district as "l'Albergo della Cortesia," and in an ecstasy of delighted appreciation, goes on to add: "l'aere e si sereno, si temperato, si salutifero, si vitale, che gli uomini che senza provar altero cielo ci vivono sono quasi immortali." And though praise from Torquato's courtly sire must not be taken too seriously, yet few will deny that the beautiful plain deserves many of the eulogies that have been showered upon it. At the small town of Meta, the next place of importance after Sorrento itself, the road divides at the Church of the Madonna of the Laurel: our way to Amalfi leading southward over the opposing ridge—the "Sorrentini Colles" of Ovid—whilst the other traverses the length of the plain by way of Pozzopiano and Sant' Agnello, until it reaches Sorrento.

One prominent feature of this district has already attracted our attention; the number of deep ravines with which the whole plain is intersected. These natural clefts are marvellously lovely in their rich luxuriance of foliage, and with their precipitous sides and verdure-clad depths will recall the wonderful latomie, the ancient stone-quarries of Syracuse. Their depths are filled with orange and lemon trees, mingled with sable spires of cypress and the tall forms of bays, which here bear jet-black berries, such as are rarely seen in our northern clime; whilst the edges of the cliffs are clothed with a serried mass of wild flowers; red valerian, crimson snap-dragon, tall blue campanulas, the dark green wild fennel, white-blossoming cistus, and a hundred other plants, gay with colour and strong with aromatic perfume.

"The quarry's edge is lined with many a plant, With many a flower distilling fragrant dew From brightly coloured petals. Almond trees Give snowy promise of sweet leaves and fruit; Here all the scented tangle of the South Covers the boulders, calcined by the sun To pearly whiteness; thorn or asphodel Sprout from each cranny of the topmost ledge To nod against the deep blue sky, or peer Into the verdure-clad abyss below."

It is not surprising to learn that these romantic glens, filled with greenery, are reputed locally to be the haunts of fairies, Monacelli, as the Sorrentine inhabitants name them. Like the "good folk" of certain country districts in England, the pixies of Devonshire, and the "Tylwyth Teg" of rural Wales, these elfin people of the ravines are not malicious or unkindly in their nature, but they are particular and somewhat exacting in certain matters. They appreciate the attentions of mortal men, and offerings of fresh milk or choice fruit are not beneath the notice of the Monacelli. Borrowing the idea from the votive offerings they make in the churches to the Virgin and the Saints, the peasants sometimes place little lamps in the fern-draped grottoes of these gullies, and to such as punctually perform these acts of courtesy, the Monacelli frequently show signs of favour. The padrone of a local inn has assured us that he and his wife stood very high in the good graces of the little people, who had on one occasion actually written them a letter, although as the characters employed were unknown to any person in the village, the object of their communication by this means seems somewhat of a mystery. Another and a more practical instance of their patronage was then related, for the favoured landlord assured us that on one occasion, when he and his wife descended downstairs in the morning, they found the house cleared, the hearth ready swept, and all the contents of last night's supper-table relaid on the brick floor, but d'un modo squisito, such as no human hand could ever have been deft enough to contrive. Just a simple innocent trifle of Sorrentine folk-lore, but how closely does it resemble the old-time gossip of rustic England, of which the great poet has left us so charming a picture!—

"Tells how the drudging Goblin sweat To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn That ten day labourers could not end."

For, as we have already said, the Monacelli show themselves grateful to those who anticipate their wants, and will serve their votaries with industry and fidelity. Fuore avra il Monacello in casa—perhaps he has had the Fairy in the house—has passed into a local phrase to designate a neighbour's unexplained prosperity. But, again, the lucky recipient of these favours must never blab or even hint at the origin of his good fortune, for all gossip is highly distasteful to the fairy folk; and that, we suppose, is the true reason why so little authentic information can be gleaned as to the methods of the Monacelli.

In direct contrast with the Monacelli of the ravines, who are, on the whole, well inclined towards mortals, are the Maghe, first cousins evidently to the terrible ginns of Arabian folk-lore; perhaps the Saracenic pirates themselves may have introduced their oriental sprites to the Neapolitan shores. In the popular mind the Maghe are supposed to possess vast treasures hidden in caves by the seashore, or on the bleak mountain side, and it was doubtless concerning these spirits that the guide's tale, given in a previous chapter, relates. The most celebrated Maga of all is the demon who haunts a certain underground corridor near Pozzuoli, containing an immense hoard of gold and jewels, which he is willing to present to anybody that is ready to give in exchange a new-born baby, presumably for purposes of devouring. Nor was the general belief in the cave-dwelling monster at Pozzuoli limited to the poor peasants and fisher-folk, for rumour persistently asserted that King Francis of Naples, father of Bomba of impious memory, more than once attempted to negotiate with the guardian of this buried treasure; but the Maga's terms, it seems, were too bloodthirsty and extravagant even for a Neapolitan Bourbon to comply with, and in that case they must indeed have been pretty startling. Malignant fairies are, in short, quite common upon the Sorrentine plain, where exasperated mothers are sometimes in the habit of frightening their squalling children into silence by threatening to introduce them to Mammone—perhaps a corruption of the old Greek word mormo—a terrible ghost, that must be a near relation to the "Big Black Man" of English nurseries, who is ever ready to carry off naughty boys and girls in his sack.