coolness, and the gladiator beheld the numerous and festive group
gathered round the tables in the atrium; while behind them, closing the
long vista of the illumined rooms beyond, the spray of the distant
fountain sparkled in the moonbeams. There, the garlands wreathed around
the columns of the hall--there, gleamed still and frequent the marble
statue--there, amidst peals of jocund laughter, rose the music and the
lay.
EPICUREAN SONG
Away with your stories of Hades,
Which the Flamen has forged to affright us--
We laugh at your three Maiden Ladies,
Your Fates--and your sullen Cocytus.
Poor Jove has a troublesome life, sir,
Could we credit your tales of his portals--
In shutting his ears on his wife, sir,
And opening his eyes upon mortals.
Oh, blest be the bright Epicurus!
Who taught us to laugh at such fables;
On Hades they wanted to moor us,
And his hand cut the terrible cables.
If, then, there's a Jove or a Juno,
They vex not their heads about us, man;
Besides, if they did, I and you know
'Tis the life of a god to live thus, man!
What! think you the gods place their bliss--eh?--
In playing the spy on a sinner?
In counting the girls that we kiss, eh?
Or the cups that we empty at dinner?
Content with the soft lips that love us,
This music, this wine, and this mirth, boys,
We care not for gods up above us--
We know there's no god for this earth, boys!
While Lydon's piety (which accommodating as it might be, was in no
slight degree disturbed by these verses, which embodied the fashionable
philosophy of the day) slowly recovered itself from the shock it had
received, a small party of men, in plain garments and of the middle
class, passed by his resting-place. They were in earnest conversation,
and did not seem to notice or heed the gladiator as they moved on.
'O horror on horrors!' said one; 'Olinthus is snatched from us! our
right arm is lopped away! When will Christ descend to protect his own?'
'Can human atrocity go farther said another: 'to sentence an innocent
man to the same arena as a murderer! But let us not despair; the
thunder of Sinai may yet be heard, and the Lord preserve his saint.
"The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."'
At that moment out broke again, from the illumined palace, the burden of
the reveller's song:--
We care not for gods up above us--
We know there's no god for this earth, boys!
Ere the words died away, the Nazarenes, moved by sudden indignation,
caught up the echo, and, in the words of one of their favorite hymns,
shouted aloud:--
THE WARNING HYMN OF THE NAZARENES
Around--about--for ever near thee,
God--OUR GOD--shall mark and hear thee!
On his car of storm He sweeps!
Bow, ye heavens, and shrink, ye deeps!
Woe to the proud ones who defy Him!--
Woe to the dreamers who deny Him!
Woe to the wicked, woe!
The proud stars shall fail--
The sun shall grow pale--
The heavens shrivel up like a scroll--
Hell's ocean shall bare
Its depths of despair,
Each wave an eternal soul!
For the only thing, then,
That shall not live again
Is the corpse of the giant TIME.
Hark, the trumpet of thunder!
Lo, earth rent asunder!
And, forth, on His Angel-throne,
He comes through the gloom,
The Judge of the Tomb,
To summon and save His own!
Oh, joy to Care, and woe to Crime,
He comes to save His own!
Woe to the proud ones who defy Him!
Woe to the dreamers who deny Him!
Woe to the wicked, woe!
A sudden silence from the startled hall of revel succeeded these ominous
words: the Christians swept on, and were soon hidden from the sight of
the gladiator. Awed, he scarce knew why, by the mystic denunciations of
the Christians, Lydon, after a short pause, now rose to pursue his way
homeward.
Before him, how serenely slept the starlight on that lovely city! how
breathlessly its pillared streets reposed in their security!--how softly
rippled the dark-green waves beyond!--how cloudless spread, aloft and
blue, the dreaming Campanian skies! Yet this was the last night for the
gay Pompeii! the colony of the hoar Chaldean! the fabled city of
Hercules! the delight of the voluptuous Roman! Age after age had
rolled, indestructive, unheeded, over its head; and now the last ray
quivered on the dial-plate of its doom! The gladiator heard some light
steps behind--a group of females were wending homeward from their visit
to the amphitheatre. As he turned, his eye was arrested by a strange
and sudden apparition. From the summit of Vesuvius, darkly visible at
the distance, there shot a pale, meteoric, livid light--it trembled an
instant and was gone. And at the same moment that his eye caught it,
the voice of one of the youngest of the women broke out hilariously and
shrill:--
TRAMP! TRAMP! HOW GAILY THEY GO!
HO, HO! FOR THE MORROW'S MERRY SHOW!
BOOK THE FIFTH
Chapter I
THE DREAM OF ARBACES. A VISITOR AND A WARNING TO THE EGYPTIAN.
THE awful night preceding the fierce joy of the amphitheatre rolled
drearily away, and greyly broke forth the dawn of THE LAST DAY OF
POMPEII! The air was uncommonly calm and sultry--a thin and dull mist
gathered over the valleys and hollows of the broad Campanian fields.
But yet it was remarked in surprise by the early fishermen, that,
despite the exceeding stillness of the atmosphere, the waves of the sea
were agitated, and seemed, as it were, to run disturbedly back from the
shore; while along the blue and stately Sarnus, whose ancient breadth of
channel the traveler now vainly seeks to discover, there crept a hoarse
and sullen murmur, as it glided by the laughing plains and the gaudy
villas of the wealthy citizens. Clear above the low mist rose the
time-worn towers of the immemorial town, the red-tiled roofs of the
bright streets, the solemn columns of many temples, and the
statue-crowned portals of the Forum and the Arch of Triumph. Far in the
distance, the outline of the circling hills soared above the vapors, and
mingled with the changeful hues of the morning sky. The cloud that had
so long rested over the crest of Vesuvius had suddenly vanished, and its
rugged and haughty brow looked without a frown over the beautiful scenes
below.
Despite the earliness of the hour, the gates of the city were already
opened. Horsemen upon horsemen, vehicle after vehicle, poured rapidly
in; and the voices of numerous pedestrian groups, clad in holiday
attire, rose high in joyous and excited merriment; the streets were
crowded with citizens and strangers from the populous neighborhood of
Pompeii; and noisily--fast--confusedly swept the many streams of life
towards the fatal show.
Despite the vast size of the amphitheatre, seemingly so disproportioned
to the extent of the city, and formed to include nearly the whole
population of Pompeii itself, so great, on extraordinary occasions, was
the concourse of strangers from all parts of Campania, that the space
before it was usually crowded for several hours previous to the
commencement of the sports, by such persons as were not entitled by
their rank to appointed and special seats. And the intense curiosity
which the trial and sentence of two criminals so remarkable had
occasioned, increased the crowd on this day to an extent wholly
unprecedented.
While the common people, with the lively vehemence of their Campanian
blood, were thus pushing, scrambling, hurrying on--yet, amidst all their
eagerness, preserving, as is now the wont with Italians in such
meetings, a wonderful order and unquarrelsome good humor, a strange
visitor to Arbaces was threading her way to his sequestered mansion. At
the sight of her quaint and primaeval garb--of her wild gait and
gestures--the passengers she encountered touched each other and smiled;
but as they caught a glimpse of her countenance, the mirth was hushed at
once, for the face was as the face of the dead; and, what with the
ghastly features and obsolete robes of the stranger, it seemed as if one
long entombed had risen once more amongst the living. In silence and
awe each group gave way as she passed along, and she soon gained the
broad porch of the Egyptian's palace.
The black porter, like the rest of the world, astir at an unusual hour,
started as he opened the door to her summons.
The sleep of the Egyptian had been usually profound during the night;
but, as the dawn approached, it was disturbed by strange and unquiet
dreams, which impressed him the more as they were colored by the
peculiar philosophy he embraced.
He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the earth, and that
he stood alone in a mighty cavern supported by enormous columns of rough
and primaeval rock, lost, as they ascended, in the vastness of a shadow
athwart whose eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And in
the space between these columns were huge wheels, that whirled round and
round unceasingly, and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to the
right and left extremities of the cavern, the space between the pillars
was left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries--not
wholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that,
meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and dank
soil; and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloom
in wild gambols--suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting into
tenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon the
gallery to the left, thin, mist-like, aerial shapes passed slowly up;
and when they had gained the hall they seemed to rise aloft, and to
vanish, as the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent.
He turned in fear towards the opposite extremity--and behold! there came
swiftly, from the gloom above, similar shadows, which swept hurriedly
along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the
sides of some invisible stream; and the faces of these spectres were
more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage; and on
some was joy, and on others sorrow--some were vivid with expectation and
hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed,
swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and
blinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelled
by a power apparently not their own.
Arbaces turned away, and, in the recess of the hall, he saw the mighty
form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy
upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with
the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements.
He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled towards the
female, and that he was borne onwards till he stood before her, face to
face. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed, and
beautifully serene. It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of his
own ancestral sphinx. No passion--no human emotion, disturbed its
brooding and unwrinkled brow: there was neither sadness, nor joy, nor
memory, nor hope: it was free from all with which the wild human heart
can sympathize. The mystery of mysteries rested on its beauty--it awed,
but terrified not: it was the Incarnation of the sublime. And Arbaces
felt the voice leave his lips, without an impulse of his own; and the
voice asked:
'Who art thou, and what is thy task?'
'I am That which thou hast acknowledged,' answered, without desisting
from its work, the mighty phantom. 'My name is NATURE! These are the
wheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of all
things.'
'And what,' said the voice of Arbaces, 'are these galleries, that
strangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyss
of gloom?'
'That,' answered the giant-mother, 'which thou beholdest to the left, is
the gallery of the Unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into
the world, are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to
their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou beholdest to thy
right, wherein the shadows descending from above sweep on, equally
unknown and dim, is the gallery of the Dead!'
'And wherefore, said the voice of Arbaces, 'yon wandering lights, that
so wildly break the darkness; but only break, not reveal?'
'Dark fool of the human sciences! dreamer of the stars, and would-be
decipherer of the heart and origin of things! those lights are but the
glimmerings of such knowledge as is vouchsafed to Nature to work her
way, to trace enough of the past and future to give providence to her
designs. Judge, then, puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved for
thee!'
Arbaces felt himself tremble as he asked again, 'Wherefore am I here?'
'It is the forecast of thy soul--the prescience of thy rushing doom--the
shadow of thy fate lengthening into eternity as declines from earth.'
Ere he could answer, Arbaces felt a rushing WIND sweep down the cavern,
as the winds of a giant god. Borne aloft from the ground, and whirled
on high as a leaf in the storms of autumn, he beheld himself in the
midst of the Spectres of the Dead, and hurrying with them along the
length of gloom. As in vain and impotent despair he struggled against
the impelling power, he thought the WIND grew into something like a
shape--a spectral outline of the wings and talons of an eagle, with
limbs floating far and indistinctly along the air, and eyes that, alone
clearly and vividly seen, glared stonily and remorselessly on his own.
