File:The Argosy (1865) (14779556394).jpg

Identifier: argosythe38wood (find matches)
Title: The Argosy
Year: 1865 (1860s)
Authors: Wood, Henry, Mrs., 1814-1887 Wood, Charles W. (Charles William), b. 1850?
Subjects:
Publisher: London (etc.) R. Bentley (etc.)
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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the rain that possibly might fall. We passed through the scene of that opera, popular in Francethough never heard in England, La Muette de Portici. Here andthere, on the road, a great house stood as a remnant of formergrandeur, with carved escutcheons over massive gateways. Manybuildings were monastically closed in, and barred windows mightonce have held behind them many a captive beauty. However,this might be, to-day they seemed dull and deserted enough; gloomymansions from which all life and romance had fled to happier andmore favoured regions. So we went on. Past Herculaneum, which to-day was not tobe visited; through Resina, Torre del Greco, Rossi, Torre dellAnnunziata; and finally through the Porta Marina—an arched tunnelI 20 feet long—into the precincts of Pompeii. Here our drive was atan end. Jehu had not spared his horses. Much of the pavementis composed of hard smooth lava, and the cattle bowl quickly overit with great clatter and little effort. The Ruins of Pompeii. 465
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Pompeii. VOL xxxvin. H H 466 The Ruins of Pompeii. Pompeii. The very word rings with sadness, every syllable echoeswith melancholy. It conjures up one of the most terrible dramasof the world; a tragedy that seems to have gained in intensity withthe burden of nearly 2,000 years. It has passed into the land ofshadows. We think of it with something of the sensation wherewithwe gaze at the stars. Its description comes to us with the vague-ness of a far off, intangible dream. But standing face to face withthe ruins of Pompeii, we realise its doom, the completeness of thedestruction which overwhelmed it in the first century of our era. To gaze upon these ruins is to be taken from the present into the■distant past. At once the tragedy, in which you almost seem tobe taking a part, rises before you, and you are no longer in the nine-teenth but in the first century. No earthly spot—Rome perhapsexcepted—so utterly conveys you into the very spirit and influenceof a bygone age. A great mass

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