giants seemed to rise again, while the sounds of trumpets were heard,
&c., &c.; and finally," he relates, "two entire cities, Herculaneum and
Pompeii, were buried under showers of ashes, while all the people were
sitting in the theatre." That many of these circumstances were invented,
would have been obvious, even without the aid of Pliny's letters; and
the examination of Herculaneum and Pompeii enables us to prove, that
none of the people were destroyed in the theatres, and indeed that there
were very few of the inhabitants who did not escape from both cities.
Yet some lives were lost, and there was ample foundation for the tale in
its most essential particulars.

It does not appear that in the year 79 any lava flowed from Vesuvius;
the ejected substances, perhaps, consisted entirely of lapilli, sand,
and fragments of older lava, as when Monte Nuovo was thrown up in 1538.
The first era at which we have authentic accounts of the flowing of a
stream of lava, is the year 1036, which is the seventh eruption from the
revival of the fires of the volcano. A few years afterwards, in 1049,
another eruption is mentioned, and another in 1138 (or 1139), after
which a great pause ensued of 168 years. During this long interval of
repose, two minor vents opened at distant points. First, it is on
tradition that an eruption took place from the Solfatara, in the year
1198, during the reign of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany; and
although no circumstantial detail of the event has reached us from those
dark ages, we may receive the fact without hesitation.[498] Nothing
more, however, can be attributed to this eruption, as Mr. Scrope
observes, than the discharge of a light and scoriform trachytic lava, of
recent aspect, resting upon the strata of loose tuff which covers the
principal mass of trachyte.[499]

_Volcanic eruption in Ischia_, 1302.--The other occurrence is well
authenticated--the eruption, in the year 1302, of a lava-stream from a
new vent on the southeast end of the Island of Ischia. During part of
1301, earthquakes had succeeded one another with fearful rapidity; and
they terminated at last with the discharge of a lava-stream from a point
named the Campo del Arso, not far from the town of Ischia. This lava ran
quite down to the sea--a distance of about two miles; in color it varies
from iron-gray to reddish black, and is remarkable for the glassy
felspar which it contains. Its surface is almost as sterile, after a
period