BURIAL AND RESURRECTION OF POMPEII.
At last Vesuvius, which had so long threatened the gay city, burst its fire sluices, and broke asunder its lava crypts, and in one mighty river of molten rock, poured its cataracts down the steep sides, and overwhelmed Pompeii in a solid shroud of lava and ashes twenty feet deep. The inhabitants had no time to gather up and carry off their valuables; the shopman left his goods in the scales where he was weighing them for customers; the baker, his bread in the oven and on the shelves; the doctor, his instruments in the surgery; the bather, his garments at the baths; and many an atrium was strewn with articles of the household abandoned in flight. Jewels, trinkets, rings, and all kinds of gold and silver works, were buried there, with wine-bottles just uncorked, and tables spread with viands only half eaten. For eighteen hundred years the black pall of lava lay upon the corpse of the city. Then it was uncovered by our moderns, and behold we were carried back to the days of the Caesars! Annihilated were those eighteen hundred years! We lived in the year 79 of Christ.—Selected.