circumstance indispensible in visits to the mountain, as the ascent in. bad weather is impracticable, or if practicable, would be uninteresting. Portici is a delightful village, lying upon and open to the enchanting bay of Naples, at the distance of four miles from the city. It is situated at the foot of the mountain, which on this side may be considered as extending to the sea, for the ground from this spot to the crater is one nearly uninterrupted ascent. This spot has been, from causes very obvious to a person who views the country, more subject to the calamitous and destructive ravages of the mountain, than any other place. After the existing inhabitants and their immediate predecessors, the modern Italians had lived in peaceful ignorance on this place for several centuries. They accidentally discovered about fifty years ago, that it was built upon an ancient city, which after some investigation of the inscriptions found in it, proved beyond all controversy to be the ancient city of Herculaneum, which was buried in the year 79 of the Christian æra, by the same eruption which destroyed the elder Pliny, and which the younger Pliny has eloquently described.

Examinations recently made, have established the fact, that the matter of six different eruptions had, in different ages, passed over this devoted spot; and I cannot doubt, that,until this volcano shall by the consumption of its combustible materials be extinct, this unhappy town will forever be subjest to attacks of this nature. I shall omit the description of the Museum of Portici, till I give my friends some account of Herculaneum, with which it is naturally connected; but I shall at present ask you to accompany me to Ve

suvius. About a mile beyond Portici, at the little village of Resina, you quit your carriages, and mount on mules and asses, accompanied by active guides, who are perfectly accustomed to the steep passages of the hill. For a distance of three miles you keep constantly and gradually ascending amidst, or in sight of the several streams of lava, which have successively flowed from the mountain in different eruptions. The Cicerones (for so they call these guides by way of ridicule) are perfectly acquainted by tradition with the dates of the several eruptions, and with the courses of the stream of lava. My guide had accompanied Sir William Hamilton for several years, and was the bearer of an honourable certificate to that effect. I have therefore full confidence in the accuracy of his account; besides which, I found the common people were well acquainted with the same facts. This indeed is not extraordinary, when we consider, that the great eruptions,which produce extensive torrents of lava, take place but once or twice in an age, and that they are the most interesting events which can possibly occur to these unhappy people. If the Scottish peasantry could recollect whole poems of their Erse bards, and transmit them from age to age unimpaired; if the Iliad of Homer was in the same manner preserved by the Greeks for several hundred years, as has been often asserted; it is surely not remarkable, that these awful phænomena, which have occurred but about twenty times since the birth of our Saviour, should be as faithfully recorded, and the history of them transmitted, by those who live in the perpetual terrour of their recurrence.

The lavas of 1779 and of 1794

make the most conspicuous figure. Both of them proceeded from breaches in the side of the mountain, and ran towards the sea, a distance of four or five miles, destroying every object which they encountered in their way. What indeed, human or terrestrial, could withstand these liquid torrents of fire, rolling along with a slow, but unvarying pace,extending several hundred yards in width, and seventy feet in height? Whereever they have taken their course a mournful face of desolation is visible, which centuries only can change, but which the art and industry of man cannot hasten, or even affect.

The lava presents a surface harder than rock, a surface which resists the hardest metals, unless accompanied with great exertions or art. It affords no pabulum for vegetation, and thousands of acres, which issued more than a century past, are still destitute of a verdant spire. Succeeding eruptions sometimes cure the very evil which preceding ones occasioned. When the eruption does not proceed to extremities, but only terminates in the emission of ashes and other light volcanick substances, these form a lodgment upon the naked lava, and soon produce a soil capable of producing and supporting vegetation in the most luxuriant degree. I passed through rich and fertile vineyards on the side of the mountain, planted over the bosom of an ancient body of lava, but which had been covered by a succeeding eruption of ashes. No lands are superiour to those which are formed in this manner.

A more dismal and gloomy prospect cannot be found, than that which immediately surrounds you as you approach to Vesuvius. The perpendicular part of the hill

itself is one vast body of black cinders, intermingled with pumice stones, and other volcanick particles, unrelieved by a single living plant.

At the foot of this little hill vast streams of ancient lava, taking various courses, as the vallies or inequalities of the ground directed, present an aspect equally dreary, and vastly more tremendous.

These bodies of lava are generally of a dark brown colour, resembling in appearance and construction of the parts, the cinders of blacksmiths' coal. Although the great body of the lava is perfectly vitrified, and when cold forms an opaque and solid, ponderous body, more compact than any stone, yet the external surface consists invariably of scoria, intermingled with pumice stones, and other light bodies, exhibiting the appearance I have just stated. The surface of the lava is also extremely unequal. It resembles the sea in a storm, or as the sea would look if its waves were in the moment of convulsion congealed or petrified. These great inequalities have been attributed by philosophers to the swelling of the lava, when in a state of fusion. This is certain, that it is in that state subject to great convulsions.

The lava of Vesuvius is a very different substance, or to speak more correctly, a collection or combination of substances, from what we should be led to believe from the polished specimens of it which we have seen in America. Those which I have seen in our country are solid, compact, and close grained, capable of receiving a high polish. It is true, that the inferiour part of the lava is of that description, but none of that sort presents itself to your eye as you

pass over the different courses of lava.

It is the general opinion of philosophical gentlemen, that the lava is a combination of the several mineral bodies, which are found in the interiour of the mountain, and which, by an extreme heat, are reduced to a state of fusion, and thus produce an homogeneous, or apparently homogeneous body. The great and general principle of union is esteemed to be a bitumen, which unites the metallick, earthy, and calcareous parts. This is inferred from the action of the lava after it issues from the mountain. It is always found in a state of violent effervescence,continually endeavouring to dilate itself, and throwing up in its agitations the lighter and imperfectly melted parts. This scum, or froth, which the literati call scoriæ, has a perfect resemblance to the half-burnt coals or cinders, which we see at the door of a blacksmith, hard, shining, and full of small cavities. This, together with the small pumice stones, and other light bodies, which fall upon the lava after the eruption, forms the external surface, and is all which can be seen of the form or nature of it, except where it has been artificially opened.

The efforts of the internal air, produced by effervescence, are observable in the irregularity of the surface of the lava, which is thrown into an infinite variety of singular and grotesque forms. With the aid of imagination many philosophers have seen in these beds of lava regular aqueducts with their arches, curious caves, and romantick grots, and in one instance they have believed that they discovered a complete temple with its dome and internal configuration. But I was not eVol. V. No. 2:

K

qually happy in my remarks. I discerned nothing on it but a wild, irregular, mis-shapen torrent, suddenly arrested by the refrigeration of its parts.

In almost all the eruptions of the few last centuries, the lava has most usually burst the sides of the mountain, not having, I presume, sufficient agitation to rise to the crater, and there to find its natural vent. After issuing from the orifice thus forcibly made, it has taken its course exactly like other fluids, according to the slope or descent of the ground, seeking the lowest vallies, and turning away from any obstacle, which it encountered.

Most writers represents motions as extremely slow, estimating its progress at half a mile an hour; but I am persuaded this must refer to its motion after it had been some time out of the crater. It is a very dense body, and extremely easily refrigerated, but a Mr. Hayter, an English clergyman, sent hither by the Prince of Wales to assist in the examination of the manuscripts at Portici, assured me that the last lava ran three miles in a very few minutes after its first eruption, but soon cooled and proceeded with its usual sluggishness. I shall however procure à regular and exact account of the phænomena, which attended the late eruptions, and of which no account has yet publickly appeared in England.

After passing over several miles of the country, which has been laid waste by this destructive volcano, you arrive at an hermitage, which was built and is preserved, I believe, chiefly for the refreshment of those, whose curiosity leads them to visit the mountain. This hermitage, called Il Salva tore,' the Saviour,' is situated' upon a little eminence at the distance of

one mile from the base of the perpendicular part of the mountain. It is raised so high, and the hill on which it stands is so solid, that it is perfectly secure from the effects of ordinary eruptions, and has hitherto been free from the effects of the earthquakes, which always prevail here in periods of eruption, though many proud cities and rich plains, at a much greater distance, have been laid waste by them.

To this spot, in times of volcanick violence, the literati and other inhabitants of Naples repair to view the grand and imposing spectacle of convulsed Nature. Here, at the distance of only one mile from the crater, they can calmly and securely witness all the phænomena, count the number and duration of the earthquakes, measure the altitude of the projected bodies, trace the progress, and mark the velocity of the liquid torrents, which issued from the ruptured surface of the mountain. After taking some refreshments here, you proceed over the valley, called 'Atreo del Cavallo,' amidst little mountains and vallies of rude lava, to the base of the perpendicular hill, which contains the crater. This part of the hill appears to be wholly formed of the ashes, cinders, and light bodies, which have issued from the crater. They are so extremely light, moveable, and destitute of tenacity, that it is impossible to form a tolerable path in them. Though it had rained exceedingly hard all the preceding day and night, yet it had not produced the least degree of consistency or solidity in the volcanick mass. These circumstances render the ascent of Vesuvius peculiarly difficult,which its great steepness would alone have rendered sufficiently so. Al

though this last ascent is not more than 1800 feet perpendicular, or about one third of a mile, yet it requires nearly an hour to ascend it. We at last however reached the crater, and I was most amplý repaid for all my toils. The former descriptions given of the crater of Vesuvius are in no degree applicable to its present state. New eruptions perpetually change its appearance; and the last, which happened only two months since, has totally altered it, having ruptured one side of the crater, and forced down an immense torrent of lava. I observed by the book of records, which they keep at the hermitage, that many ladies had descended into the crater. Had I been ignorant of the history of Vesuvius, I should have been astonished at this boldness; but I know that, at certain times, it is as easy as the ascent of the mountain, and not more dangerous. No fire or eruption of any moment had taken place for eight years preceding the present eruption. The sides of the crater even now are not difficult of descent; but, in lieu of an immense empty bason with a hole in the centre, the crater now exhibited fourteen small burning mountains, whose mouths were still vomiting up smoke and hot sulphureous vapours. These mountains were composed of half-burnt rocks, covered with sulphur, and the smoke issued, as in a coal-kiln, from a thousand crevices. ladies the descent would at present be impracticable; but Mr. Randolph, of Virginia, and myself, let ourselves down into the crater, and mounted on one of these newformed hills, which had no existence three months ago, and which another hour may annihilate. We found the stones still insufferably hot, and the sulphureous vapour

To

was so powerful,that we were afraid either to proceed or remain, and retreated back again to the banks of the crater with precipitation.

I have several specimens of these stones, loaded with sulphur, which we took hot and smoking from the new mountain we ascended. We proceeded to that part of the crater, which the last eruption had broken down, a circumstance which has not happened before for a long period of time. I found the sides of the late ruptured orifice perpendicular, and about twenty or thirty feet deep. The width of the gulf, which the lava had forced open, was, I should conjecture, more than one hundred feet, and it had carried away the side of the mountain in the same manner for a very considerable distance.

The crater itself is about six

hundred feet diameter, as near as I could judge, and is the most awful and tremendous object in its present state which I ever beheld. The thick volume of smoke prevented my making as accurate remarks on its interiour formation, as I could have wished. The mountain has continued ever since that day to be very turbulent, and I think that another eruption may be soon looked for.

The descent of the mountain is as rapid and easy, as the ascent is laborious. Incapable of supporting yourself in that rolling sand, you abandon yourself to your fate, and arrive at the bottom in the space of five or ten minutes, traversing the same distance, which had cost you an hour to ascend. Yours, &c.

BELIEF in the influence of the stars on the fortune and character of man, together with the attention always unavoidably given to the measurement of time, preserved some knowledge of astronomy among our ancestors even in the darkest ages of modern Europe, and rendered it one of the first objects of zealous study at the æra of the general revival of learning and science. The alchemical dream of the convertibility of all baser metals into gold engaged many an enthusiast and many an impostor in experiments in chemistry, from the earliest period in modern history from which we have any information of the pursuits of the inquisitive and the learned. The uses of common life, and the restoration of this part of the sci

ence of the ancients, encouraged and advanced the study of mechanicks even in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. No other branch of physical science but these three had been much, or successfully, studied by the moderns before the days of Bacon.

It was the grand merit of Bacon, that he turned mankind from investigating in science merely the relations of existence (in general very imperfectly known), and of words,' to acquaint them. selves more fully, by the experiments of the senses and of auxiliary instruments, with existence in its different sensible modifications, and with the mutual relations of the various parts of material existence to one another.' Science was thus at once reduced to ex