Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/433

Rh by beauty or the virtues of civil life. This was a great thought, and its inheritance has, perhaps, not been sufficiently attended to by the people of the present time.

I looked over the whole city from a portion of the walls, which are still in good preservation. Tranquil as a dead body on a flower-covered bier, it lay on the Campagna Felice, at the outlet of the Sarno to the sea, surrounded by the fertile and vine-covered hills of Torre del Greco, at the foot of Vesuvius. The summit of the mountain still smoked, and in the brightness of the mid-day sun it seemed as if enveloped in a variegated velvet cloak. The hardened lava streams shone out upon it like glowing embroidery. The volcano stood there like a pitiless despot, calmly smoking his noon-day pipe in luxurious far niente, whilst his victim lay at his feet, without a complaint and without a mourner, silent forever.

Yet not silent: still indeed speak those glances from the walls, those wonderful glances full of soul and intelligence. I saw, as I was leaving Pompeii, a pair of eyes which I shall never forget. It was near the street of tombs, on a gray wall, a female head, with an ornament of snakes in her hair. The snakes had become dimmed to insignificance, but the young, beautiful countenance stood forth distinctly, with eyes full of tears, full of a silent despair, directed towards heaven. That seeking glance, with its speechless, suffering, questioning from the unhappy, from the sinful soul, still lives in that gay Pompeii, in the midst of those beautiful dwellings, those life-rejoicing frescos! What a long, consuming agony must have