pyrites began to fall on our heads; and we were stopped by the obstacles which the ruins of the volcano had suddenly formed, by falling into the sea, and almost filling it up, on that part of the coast. I then commanded my pilot to steer to the villa of my friend Pomponianus, which, you know, was situated in the inmost recess of the bay. The wind was very favourable to carry me thither, but would not allow him to put off from the shore, as he was desirous to do. We were therefore constrained to pass the night in his house. The fa mily watched, and I slept ;till the heaps of pumicestones, which incessantly fell from the clouds, that had by this time been impelled to that side of the bay, rose so high in the area of the apartment I lay in, that, if I had staid any longer, I could not have got out; and the earthquakes were so violent, as to threaten every moment the fall of the house. We, therefore, thought it more safe to go into the open air, guarding our heads, as well as we were able, with pillows tied upon them. The wind continuing contrary, and the sea very rough, we all. remained on the shore, till the descent of a sulphurous and fiery vapour suddenly oppressed and overpowered me. In all this I hope that I acted as the duty of my station required, and with true magnanimity. But on this occasion, and in many other parts of your conduct, I must say, my dear nephew, there was a mixture of vanity blended with your virtue, which impaired and disgraced it. Without that, you would have been one of the worthiest men whom Rome has ever produced; for none excelled you in sincere integrity of heart and greatness of sentiments. Why would you lose. the substance of glory by seeking the shadow ?— Your eloquence had, I think, the same fault as your manners: it was generally too affected. You professed to make Cicero your guide and pattern; but when one reads his panegyric upon Julius Cæsar, in his oration for Marcellus, and yours upon Trajan, the first seems the genuine language of truth and nature, raised and dignified with all the majesty of the most sublime oratory: the latter appears the harangue of a florid rhetorician, more desirous to shine, and to set off his own wit, than to extol the great man whose virtues he was praising. Pliny the Y. I will not question your judgment either of my life or my writings. They might both have been better, if I had not been too solicitous to render them perfect. It is perhaps some excuse for the affectation of my style, that it was the fashion of the age in which I wrote. But it is mortifying to me to say much on this subject. Permit me therefore to resume the contemplation of that on which our conversation turned before. What a direful calamity was the eruption of Vesuvius, which you have been describing! Do not you remember the beauty of that fine coast, and of the mountain itself, before it was torn with the violence of those internal fires, that forced their way through its surface? The foot of it was covered with cornfields and rich meadows, interspersed with splendid villas, and magnificent towns: the sides of it were clothed with the best vines in Italy. How quick, how unexpected, how terrible was the change! All was at once overwhelmed with ashes, cinders, broken rocks, and fiery torrents, presenting to the eye the most dismal scene of horrour and desolation. - Pliny the E. You paint it very truly.—But has it never occurred to your philosophical mind, that this change is a striking emblem of that which must happen, by the natural course of things, to every rich, luxurious state? While the inhabitants of it are sunk in voluptuousness, while all is smiling around them, and they imagine that no evil, no danger is nigh, the latent seeds of destruction are fermenting within; till, breaking out on a sudden, they lay waste all their opulence, all their boasted delights; and leave them a sad monument of the fatal effects of internal tempests and convulsions. Lord Lyttelton WHETHER THE ANCIENTS HAD MORE VIRTUE THAN THE MODERNS. SOCRATES AND MONTAIGNE. Mont. It is you then, divine Socrates! How I am transported to see you! I am but newly come into these parts, and immediately upon my arrival I made it my business to find you out. In short, after having filled my book with your name and praises, I have now the happy opportunity of your conversation, and of informing myself from you, by what means you became possessed of such a native virtue, the motions of which were all so unaffected, and which had no such example before it, even in that happy age in which you lived. Socr. I am very well pleased to meet with one of the dead, that seems to have been a philosopher. But because you are lately come from above, and it is a long time since I have seen any person here (for they leave me lonely enough, and I have no crowds, I will assure you, that press for my conversation) therefore give me leave to ask you what news? How goes the world? Is it not mightily changed? Mont. Extremely; you would not know it. Socr. I am ravished to hear it; I was always of opinion it must of necessity grow better and wiser, than it was in my days. Mont. What do you mean? Why, it is ten times more foolish and corrupt than ever; that is the change I speak of; and I expected to hear from you the history of the times which you have seen, in which there reigned so much honesty and integrity. Socr. On the contrary, I was prepared to hear wonders of the age, in which you have just finished your life. What! Have not men by this time shaken off the follies of antiquity? Mont. You are an ancient yourself, and for that reason, I suppose, make so bold with antiquity: but be assured that men's manners are at present a large subject of lamentation, and that all things degenerate daily. Socr. Is it possible? I thought in my time things went as perversely as could be, and was in hopes that at last they would fall into a more reasonable train- -and that men would have made their advantage of so many years experience. Mont. Alas! What regard have they to ex perience? Like silly birds, they suffer themselves to be taken in the same nets that have caught a hundred thousand of their kind already. There is not one but enters a perfect novice upon the stage of life; the foilies of the fathers are all lost upon their children, and do not serve to instruct them at all. Socr. But what is the reason of this? I should think that surely the world, in its old age, ought to become wiser and more regular than it was in its youth. Mont. Mankind has, in all ages, the same inclinations, over which reason has not the least power. So that to the world's end there will be follies, and the same follies too, as long as there are men. Socr. Then why would you put a greater value upon the ages of antiquity, than upon this present age? Mont. Ah! Socrates! I know you to have a particular mastery in the art of reasoning, and to be able so ingeniously to beset those, with whom you dispute, with arguments whose consequences they do not foresee, that you can lead them whither you please. This is what may be called playing the midwife to their thoughts; I am sure I find myself delivered of a proposition directly opposite to what I had advanced, and yet I cannot give up the controversy neither. It is certain we find not now any of those robust and vigorous souls of antiquity: show me an Aristides, a Phocion, a Pericles, or to name one for all crates. -a So Socr. Why, what hinders? Is it because nature's exhausted, and has not spirits left to produce |