THE house of Diomed, the pleasant place

Of the voluptuous Roman; where the hand
Of art and luxury have left a trace

Which, from time hidden, could all change withstand,
But now unburied, soon shall sink to sand;
Opened to skiey influence and the air,

All that his vanity or fondness planned:
The laws of Nature it again doth share,

And sternly are they dealt, so long evaded there!
The alcove of their summer hour's reposing,
The covered portico's gay walls' retreat,
The garden's ample area round enclosing,
Where rose the fountain softening the day's heat,
Is now a waste where weeds and thistles meet !
The flower-bed once with graceful trellis wove,
The loftier terrace with its prospect seat,-
All gone, those broken columns point above
The favourite haunt, the home of their domestic love.
How the mind doth embody the scenes fled,
Of human life enacted, witnessed here!
No phantasy, no tale forgot when read; (a)
But on which Truth hath set her seal severe :
Even with a thought, again are raised, how clear
On Memory's eye their living forms to view!
The shades of those who sat, again appear,
All rise as once; the fountain flows anew,

The pillars stand around, the flowers their life renew.
A marble bench beside that fount is placed:
The Roman family are gathered round;
There Diomed reclines, with, half-embraced,
His eldest, Julia; there is heard no sound
Of gaiety or joy; a gloom profound

Hath sunk o'er them and Nature like a pall:

The parching heats have cracked the gaping ground:
The flowers are withered, ceased the fountain's fall:

Languor and listlessnes weigh down alike on all.

But Julia leaned upon her father's breast,

And their eyes met, while each their thoughts controlled:
A sense of evil weighed, though unexpressed,

On either; she watched mournfully the fold

Of heaviest clouds which thus long days had rolled
Around the Mountain's hidden bosom nursed:

Prophet it looked of evils yet untold!

Fear, gazing there, still magnified the worst;

Storms, whose wrath held so long, should yet in thunder burst!

Preparing for publication by John Edmund Reade, Esq., author of "Cain the Wanderer;" dedicated, by express permission, to the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel,

Bart.

The town was hushed; save when a faint shout came
From the far distant Amphitheatre :(b)

The oppressive air was charged with sulphurous flame:
The trees drooped wan, no breath a leaf to stir,
Each trunk stood moveless as a sepulchre ;
And the all-sickly weight by Nature thrown,
Pressed heaviest on human hearts; they were
All silent; each, foreboding, dared not own

Their fear-the prescient shadow of an ill unknown!

Behold the Mountain !" words withheld while spoken,
For the Appearance fixed the astounded mind!
The clouds that veiled so long its crest, were broken
Away,-hurled upwards by some pent-up wind,
Which earth no more could in her caverns bind;
A mightier marvel! lo-forth wildly driven,

As if within its depths, till then confined,

Thick volumed Clouds cleave through his forehead riven,
Branching their pine-like shape in the profound of heaven!(c)
A moment-mute-awed-stupified-they stood!
The mountain that had slept a thousand years
Awakens from his slumber! lo, that flood
Of eddying vapour still its shape uprears;-
They fly not yet—for who had linked with fears
Vesuvius in his evergreen attire ?*

But lo! each moment, wilder, fiercer, nears
The enormous canopy, still branching nigher-
Away!—for life—for life—its leaves are turned to fire!

The trunk into a furnace flame! the shrouds
Of darkness hurling off each side, alone
Blazing, encircled with a night of clouds,

The Spirit of Fire comes rushing from his throne !
Earth, cleft asunder, to her depths is shown,

Belching forth flames, while 'scaping from their thrall,
The wild Winds leap up from their caves unknown;
The answering Sea doth on the mountains call;
The Thunder of the heavens is heard above them all.

Hark from Pompeii ! one astounding shout!
The roar of thousands, for a moment drowned
The wreck of elements; yet, o'er the rout,
Rose women's screams-a wilder, shriller sound;
Then-sunk for ever! who might hear? the ground
Reeling beneath-who see when air was night,
Lit by the forked lightnings hurtling round
Their arrowy deaths-the flash that blinded sight,
The scathing ashes shot from that all blasting Light,
Making the Shape of Darkness visible !

As, blazing up, all terribly in air,

It stood out there the world's last funeral pile ; (d)
Death was within the walls, without despair.
How the crowds rushed, led by that livid glare,
Deliriously on! or wildly clung

On to the shrines, assailing Heaven with prayer!
Or to their hearths in gibbering madness hung:
Or, motionless, lay crushed 'neath giant columns flung!

The lines of Martial will be illustrative here.

Caught, midway, in the jaws of earth while flying, Or, writhing, scathed beneath the fiery rain, (e) Prostrate in agonies undreamed of dying! Trampled like worms, invoking those in vain Above them, rushing from the fiery pain Like tortured fiends, their flight but to delay One moment-no voice answered them again!The chase was life and death-no foot could stay, Alas! the crashing walls were not more deaf than they!

All was forgotten in the desperate strife

For preservation- for the short-lived span-
The fleeting tenement of human life!

Then burst the prayers of faith, and the wild ban
Of pale Apostacy!-no longer ran

Blood in the veins and soft humanities,
Into a demon seemed transformed the man:
Bared was his naked heart!-the social ties-
Law, habit, reverence, love, life's sympathies,

Were crushed like threads before the giant force
Of Nature's master-passion! which now made
That spot a Hell without its vain remorse!
The son shook off his leaning sire who weighed
On him-and plunged the parricidal blade!
The husband fled his wife: but she, in death,
All woman-like, forgot not, though betrayed,
She was a mother! from the ashes' breath,
She with her body shields her dying child beneath.

Lo! 'neath yon arch, apart from the blind crowds,
Rushing to certain death along the streets,
How yon pale priest amid the darkness shrouds !
Triumph glares in his hollow eyes, that meets
Strangely with awe and horror; yet how beats
His heart with joy! his shrine's wealth he doth bear,
While through the seaward passage he retreats;
Hark! his sharp cry of torture and despair,
The light of twenty ages found his ashes there!

Or turn to the patrician's marble hall, Where yon gigantic slave doth sit alone: Nature and his red hand have burst his thrall! Lo! how his murdered victims round are thrownHow full his triumph-all is now his own! But how escape? how burst yon ash-heaped door? Through one thick wall his axe hath madly hewn! The second yields - the roof gives way-'tis o'erThe giant-freeman falls crushed on the buried floor.(ƒ) But while the human tides rush through the gate, How the red Mountain blazing full in view, Yon Roman sentinel doth contemplate! Motionless as a statue there he grew: Composed his cheek though livid is its hue, Sternness, with awe, in his undaunted eye! Vainly the fiery deluge round him flew:

He had not-like yon herd-been taught to fly, Scathed, blasted in his place, the warrior stood to die! (g)

But while wild Anarchy careered abroad,

Throned on the elements-while the rocking ground
Heaved like the ocean-waves, where Ruin trod,
Each step sunk in their hollow troughs profound,
The blackening masses of the city drowned,
Or peering 'midst the gulfs of lava-flame,
Until their topmost points no more were found ;—
Where sheltered they, who still have left a name?
Still did they live? what fate-what respite to them came?
Descend yon subterranean gallery-

A lamp burns dimly there, which, as ye look, (h)
Reveals forms palpable before the eye;

So mute, 30 motionless in that dark nook,
That ye might well deem life had each forsook,
Save that, at times, a sigh, a groan was sped
From bosoms that convulsive tremors shook;
Ah! better were it that the spark had fled,
Than by delusive Hope thus vainly, fondly fed!

They stand, each leaning turned toward the wall;
Their lips pressed there, as if they might inhale
Air-or its freshness by that touch recall; (i)
One gasp for life-where breath of life doth fail:
Alas! that faint hope what may it avail?
Yon loop-holes that receive the air from high,
Take through their apertures the burning gale!
Still thicker heaves their panting agony,

Life's audibly-thrilling pulse as Death advances nigh!

There sits the Roman matron, but how changed!
Her infants sleep around her feet-that rest
Of lassitude for endless sleep exchanged;
But she, so beautiful in youth, hath pressed,
Fair Julia, to her mother; and caressed
As those who part for ever! and they kiss ;-
Such kisses as reveal, though unexpressed,
The truth so desolating-that in this

World they have bid farewell to hope-to happiness!

But, as their faces toward each other turned,
How ghastlily they told the truths which love
Would hide in vain! the lamp that flickering burned,
O'er their pale features gleaming, showed how strove
Death and Life busy there!-its ray above
Sicklily waved, expired, and all was gloom,
Darkness, and Silence! save when wilder drove
The thunders bellowing o'er their living tomb!
Or when the flashing Light the caverned vaults illume!

Then, their long silence was no more withheld-
"Air! air!" one desperate impulse was obeyed
By all-for mad despair alike impelled

To burst the door-their fate no more delayed;
What recked it now, debarred all human aid,
How they expired? while here, a living death
In tenfold horrors they beheld arrayed!

To die above-to gasp in fiery breath

Were heaven, so they but 'scaped this sulphurous grave beneath!

One last, long, wild, and passionate embrace,
For those linked hearts that shall embrace no more!
Then, with fixed will portrayed in her stern face,
The matron rose to unbar the heated door;
One stifled shriek that burst-told all was o'er!
The strain'd bars flew; the weight of ashes rife
With sulphurous fires heap'd up the burning floor!
A moment's agony yet,- -a feeble strife

To meet to join-to clasp,-then ceased the pulse of life!

(a) No tale forgot when read.

Not, certainly, the "Last Days of Pompeii." Among such a crowd of productions from the same talented author, it would be difficult to assign a preference; but surely the novel in question is scarcely inferior to his best. (b) Distant amphitheatre.

The house of Diomed and the amphitheatre form the opposite extremities of Pompeii.

(c) In the profound of heaven.

Pliny's famous letter will be quoted hereafter-a letter which leaves little to imagination, clothing description with the beauty of truth.

(d) World's last funeral pile.

The Stoics believed the end of the world would be consummated by fire; so, Pliny's letter.

(e) Fiery rain.

The steam sent up by Vesuvius descended in torrents of rain. For the most perfect description of everything connected with the city, the reader is referred to "Pompeii," a work of intense interest, whose only fault is in being anonymous.

(f) The giant-freeman falls crushed on the buried floor.

The rent through the two walls has been closed up, but the marks are shown; the axe was found near the skeleton, supposed to have been that of a priest of Isis.

(g) The warrior stood to die.

After the closest inquiry, I found this a fact. His spear and bronze helmet, dug up by his bones, thickly indented and studded with volcanic matter, are shown at the Museum, and present a most extraordinary appearance. The mountain, from his post, seems fearfully near; and he must have suffered, as in the text, with the full freedom to fly like the rest, had not the pride of discipline prevailed.

(h) A lamp burns dimly there.

The bronze lamp (with horn substituted for glass), the key in the hands of Diomed's wife, and the small, gold, wrought purse, the earrings, bracelets, and necklaces of her daughter, are shown at the Museum. They are roughly wrought; but time and damp have injured them. Her skull is also shown; the forehead occurred to me as being rather low.

(i) By that touch recall.

From many visits to the spot (close by the farther door), I was able to discover the evident marks of heads, and of faces, as having been pressed against the damp wall.