with water, as, also, the Acherusian and other lakes. Vesuvius, in our modern days, has lost full six hundred feet of its original elevation; and, perhaps, during the long course of ages, that grand mountain, St. Angelo, will succeed it in performing its great ends of creation.

The territory of Naples is the theatre, above all the world, where the Almighty Power-for here the mind is driven to first Causes-appears most immediately in action. JOURNAL.

X.

Dreamed by the sage of old:

Allusion to that most eloquent and exquisitely poetical apostrophe of Lucretius to Venus, or Nature, in the opening of his fantastical poem: it seems as if the influence which he evoked had descended in his words.

XI.

Where thy sad Roman Sister's Spirit yearns :

Every reflective mind is more struck by Rome on his return from Naples; the grandeur of the objects—the waste of the Campagna-the desolation of the tombs-the speaking eloquence of the Appian Way-the Titanic sweep of the aqueducts alone, yawning round him, would each, of themselves, leave solemn impressions on the mind, and the more so, when contrasted, for one moment, with the tinsel shows and pettiness of life which he has left behind him. The roar of an immense population yet fresh in his ears-the bustle of

business or gaiety-the voices of mirth or contention-the rolling of the innumerable vehicles-in fine, the ever-sounding and almost bewildering noises of the active and stirring life of Naples, are contrasted, and most forcibly, with the solemnity, and, far more, with the impressive yet speaking SILENCE which seems to brood over the Eternal City. Entering the walls the palaces, in their gigantic proportions, and the ruins, suggesting still vaster ideas, appear like the works of a superior race of beings. We seem to have ascended the flight of ages, to have left behind the trifles of the present, in the full absorption of the mighty past. Rome, in her severe and matron majesty, seems to despise the gaieties and frivolities of her lighter and gayer sister; every feature disposes the mind more to reflection than delight. Like the fallen Queen of the Master-Dramatist, her seat is on the ground, and her words are, it possible, more impressive than her attitude:

Here I and Sorrow sit,
Bid Kings bow down to me!

XII.

A Form there present.

"At the entertainments of the rich," (quoting the words of the Historian,) "just as they are about to rise from "the repast, a small coffin is carried round, containing an "exact representation of a dead body; and, as it is shown "to the guests in succession, the bearer says—

Ες τουτον ὀρέων πᾶνε καὶ τέρπει,

ἔσσεαι γὰρ ἀποθανών τοιουτος HEROD. ii. 78.

"Cast your eye on this figure: after death you will yourself resemble it; drink, then, and be happy." EUTERPE, i. 309.

XIII.

Mountains cleaving through the Sea:

"The Lucrine lake is a little sedgy plash," says old Sandys, in his odd quaint style, "choked up by the horrible eruption "of the Monte Nuovo, whereof as oft as I think, I am easy "to credit whatsoever is wonderful. For who here knows

not, or who elsewhere will believe, that a mountain should arise (partly out of the lake, and partly out of the sea) in "one day and a night? In the year of our Lord 1538, on the "29th of September, the country hereabout was so vexed "with perpetual earthquakes, as no one house was left so "entire as not to expect an immediate ruin; after that the

sea had retired two hundred paces from the shore, (leaving "abundance of fish, and springs of fresh water rising in the "bottom,) this Mountain visibly ascended, with a hideous roar"ing, horribly vomiting stones and such stores of cinders as "overwhelmed all the buildings thereabout."

XVI.

How Vestal Nature, even to thy cime:

I trust that I have not coined a word here; for I think I have seen it adopted, and therefore sanctioned, by the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. The word occurred to me

and more particularly whilst residing in Switzerland--as the term of all others most expressive of the object.

XVII.

'Tis Herculaneum.

The city of Herculaneum was found covered with six layers of ashes, making a height of sixty-five feet, which renders it certain that there had been five eruptions after that which buried it in a. D. 79.

XXIII.

How the Scene's stern sublimity appals!

All these stanzas were, in common with the whole poem, a record of the impressions of the hour. Nothing could be more awfully, more sublimely imposing than the appearance of the Clouds, rushing rapidly up from the inner crater-the occasional night of darkness which they made-the unearthly noises beneath, and the unbroken silence that reigned above, It is here, more especially, we feel how these scenes were remembered by Milton in his eternal Poem. Here it is that we, too, walk—

With uneasy steps

Over the burning marle.

Here, we look down into the abyss

The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave.

We see the pit, which

Casts forth redounding smoke and ruddy flame.

The chaos-the darkness, and the thunderings;-all the sublime images, for which he taxed his memory, and his own sublimer imagination, to form his earlier books, are palpably manifested to us here. JOURNAL.

XXVI.

the moral contemplate

Of chained Prometheus.

Prometheus may surely be termed the sublimest morality ever embodied by the imagination; moral, in the loftiest, the severest sense of the expression. In him is shown the superiority of a Spirit, immortal in itself, to human suffering; the great cause, being for the welfare of mankind. Prometheus, viewed from this point, stands on far higher ground than the Fiend of Milton, who, though portrayed (as Goëthe also observes) with masterly powers, is necessarily placed in a subaltern situation. Prometheus, on the contrary, creates : he is a benevolent and a humanised spirit; afflicted, but not subdued by his trials; accursed, but unshaken from his noble aims; far different, here, indeed, from Satan, who, the personification of selfish Evil, commits his malevolent and abortive attempts, not from any definite hope of success, but from the mere goadings of an impotent despair. The sympathy we accord to Lucifer in the great Poem is qualified, and paid to his undaunted courage alone; on this vantage ground, Milton takes his stand; and asserts that faculty in all its grandeur.