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 recollection, that beneath a soil so fruitful and so smiling, lie edifices, gardens, and whole towns, swallowed up. Portici rests upon Herculaneum; its environs upon Resina; and at a little distance is Pompeii, in the streets of which, after more than seventeen centuries of non-existence, the astonished traveller now walks. After a long interval of repose, in the first year of the reign of Titus (the 79th of the Christian era,) the volcano suddenly broke out, ejecting thick clouds of ashes and pumice stone, beneath which Herculaneum, Stabia, and Pompeii, were completely buried. This eruption was fatal to the elder Pliny, the historian, who fell a victim to his humanity and love of science.

There have been thirty-nine eruptions of Mount Vesuvius recorded by historians; the last one makes the fortieth. Previous to the recent eruption, Vesuvius displayed all round the openings which it had made at different periods, and to which they gave the name of mouths. From those openings flowed the lava, the name given the torrents of liquified matter which rushed out of the bursting sides of the Mount.

Running from the summit, it spread over the fields at the bottom, and to the sea. The matter, when cold, hardens to stone. It is used to pave the streets of