re came down upon them a rush of flames, and a
horrible smell of sulphur, and all ran for their lives. Some of the
slaves tried to help the Admiral upon his legs; but he sank down again
overpowered with the brimstone fumes, and so was left behind. When they
came back again, there he lay dead, but with his clothes in order and his
face as quiet as if he had been only sleeping. And that was the end of a
brave and learned man--a martyr to duty and to the love of science.

But what was going on in the meantime? Under clouds of ashes, cinders,
mud, lava, three of those happy cities were buried at once--Herculaneum,
Pompeii, Stabiae. They were buried just as the people had fled from
them, leaving the furniture and the earthenware, often even jewels and
gold, behind, and here and there among them a human being who had not had
time to escape from the dreadful deluge of dust. The ruins of
Herculaneum and Pompeii have been dug into since; and the paintings,
especially in Pompeii, are found upon the walls still fresh, preserved
from the air by the ashes which have covered them in. When you are older
you perhaps will go to Naples, and see in its famous museum the
curiosities which have been dug out of the ruined cities; and you will
walk, I suppose, along the streets of Pompeii and see the wheel-tracks in
the pavement, along which carts and chariots rumbled 2000 years ago.
Meanwhile, if you go nearer home, to the Crystal Palace and to the
Pompeian Court, as it is called, you will see an exact model of one of
these old buried houses, copied even to the very paintings on the wells,
and judge for yourself, as far as a little boy can judge, what sort of
life these thoughtless, luckless people lived 2000 years ago.

And what had become of Vesuvius, the treacherous mountain? Half or more
than half of the side of the old crater had been blown away, and what was
left, which is now called the Monte Somma, stands in a half circle round
the new cone and new crater which is burning at this very day. True,
after that eruption which killed Pliny, Vesuvius fell asleep again, and
did not awake for 134 years, and then again for 269 years but it has been
growing more and more restless as the ages have passed on, and now hardly
a year passes without its sending out smoke and stones from its crater,
and streams of lava from its sides.

And now, I suppose, you will want to know what a volcano is like, and
what a cone, and a crater, and lava a