"Earth revives him then. He is once more up; but the blood rolls down his face."

"By the thunderer! Lydon wins it. See how he presses on him! That blow on the temple would have crushed an ox; it has crushed Tetraides. He falls again he cannot move-habet!-habet!"

"Habet!" repeated Pansa. "Take them out and give them the armor and swords."

"Noble editor," said the officers, "we fear that Tetraides will not recover in time; howbeit, we will try."

"Do so."

In a few minutes the officers, who had dragged off the stunned and insensible gladiator, returned' with rueful countenances. They feared for his life; he was utterly incapacitated from re-entering the

arena.

"In that case," said Pansa, "hold Lydon a subditius; and the first gladiator that is vanquished, let Lydon supply his place with the victor."

The people shouted their applause at this sentence; then they again sunk into deep silence. The trumpet sounded loudly. The four combatants stood each against each in prepared and stern aray. Dost thou recognize the Romans, my Clodius; are they among the celebrated, or are they merely ordinarii?"

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Eumolpus is a good second-rate swordsman, my Lepidus. Nipimus, the lesser man, I have never seen before; but he is the son of one of the imperial fiscales, and brought up in a proper school; doubtless they will show sport, but I have no heart for the game; I cannot win back my money-I am undone! Curses on that Lydon! who could have supposed he was so dexterous or so lucky?"

66

Well, Clodius, shall I take compassion on you, and accept your own terms with these Romans?" 'An even ten sestertia on Eumolpus, then?"

"What! when Nepimus is untried? Nay, nay; that is too bad."

"Well-ten to eight." Agreed."

While the contest in the amphitheater had thus commenced, there was one in the loftier benches for whom it had assumed, indeed, a poignant-a stifling interest. The aged father of Lydon, despite his Christian horror of the spectacle, in his agonized anxiety for his son, had not been able to resist being the spectator of his fate. One amidst a fierce crowd of strangers—the lowest rabble of the populace the old man saw, felt nothing, but the formthe presence of his brave son! Not a sound had escaped his lips when twice he had seen him fall to the earth;-only he had turned paler, and his limbs trembled. But he had uttered one low cry when he saw him victorious; unconscious, alas! of the more fearful battle to which that victory was but a prelude.

G

VESUVIUS

(From "The Last Days of Pompeii")

LAUCUS turned in gratitude but in awe, caught Ione once more in his arms, and fled along the street, that was yet intensely luminous. But suddenly a duller shake fell over the air. Instinctively he turned to the mountain, and behold! one of the two gigantic crests, into which the summit had been divided, rocked and wavered to and fro; and then, with a sound, the mightiness of which no language can describe, it fell from its burning base, and rushed, an avalanche of fire, down the sides of the mountain! At the same instant gushed forth a volume of blackest smoke-rolling on, over air, sea, and earth.

Another-and another--and another shower of

ashes, far more profuse than before, scattered fresh desolation along the streets. Darkness once more wrapped them as a veil; and Glaucus, his bold heart at last quelled and despairing, sank beneath the cover of an arch, and, clasping Ione to his hearta bride on that couch of ruin-resigned himself to die.

Meanwhile, Nydia, when separated by the throng from Glaucus and Ione, had in vain endeavored to regain them. In vain she raised that plaintive cry so peculiar to the blind. It was lost amidst a thousand shrieks of more selfish terror. Again and again she returned to the spot where they had been divided-to find her companions gone, to seize every fugitive-to inquire of Glaucus-to be dashed aside 'n the impatience of distraction. Who in that hour

ared one thought to his neighbor? Perhaps in scenes of universal horror, nothing is more horrid than the unnatural selfishness they engender. At length it occurred to Nydia, that as it had been resolved to seek the sea-shore for escape, her most probable chance of rejoining her companions would be to persevere in that direction. Guiding her steps, then, by the staff which she always carried, she continued, with incredible dexterity, to avoid the masses of ruin that encumbered the path-to thread the streets-and unerringly (so blessed now was that accustomed darkness, so afflicting in ordinary life!) to take the nearest direction to the sea-side.

Poor girl! her courage was beautiful to behold!and Fate seemed to favor one so helpless! The boiling torrents touched her not, save by the general rain which accompanied them; the huge fragments of scoria shivered the pavement before and beside her, but spared that frail form: and when the lesser ashes fell over her, she shook them away with a slight tremor, and dauntlessly resumed her course. Weak, exposed, yet fearless, supported but by

one wish, she was a very emblem of Psyche in her wanderings; of Hope walking through the Valley of the Shadow; of the Soul itself-lone but undaunted, amidst the dangers and the snares of life!

Her path was, however, constantly impeded by the crowds that now groped amidst the gloom, now fled in the temporary glare of the lightnings across the scene; and, at length, a group of torch-bearers rushing full against her, she was thrown down with some violence.

"What!" said the voice of one of the party, "is this the brave blind girl! By Bacchus, she must not be left here to die! Up, my Thessalian! So-so. Are you hurt? That's well! Come along with us! we are for the shore!"

"O Sallust! it is thy voice! The gods be thanked! Glaucus Glaucus! Have ye seen him?"

"Not I. He is doubtless out of the city by this time. The gods who saved him from the lion will save him from the burning mountain."

As the kindly epicure thus encouraged Nydia, he drew her along with him towards the sea, heeding not her passionate entreaties that he would linger yet awhile to search for Glaucus; and still, in the accent of despair, she continued to shriek out that beloved name, which, amidst all the roar of the convulsed elements, kept alive a music at her heart.

The sudden illumination, the burst of the floods of lava, and the earthquake, which we have already described, chanced when Sallust and his party had just gained the direct path leading from the city to the port; and here they were arrested by an immense crowd, more than half the population of the city. They spread along the field without the walls, thousands upon thousands, uncertain whither to fly. The sea had retired far from the shore; and they who had fled to it had been so terrified by the agitation and preternatural shrinking of the ele

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ment, the gasping forms of the uncouth sea things which the waves had left upon the sand, and by the sound of the huge stones cast from the mountain into the deep, that they had returned again to the land, as presenting the less frightful aspect of the two. Thus the two streams of human beings, the one seaward, the other from the sea, had met together, feeling a sad comfort in numbers; arrested in despair and doubt.

"The world is to be destroyed by fire," said an old man in long loose robes, a philosopher of the Stoic school; "Stoic and Epicurean wisdom have alike agreed in this prediction; and the hour is come."

"Yea; the hour is come !" cried a loud voice, solemn but not fearful.

Those around turned in dismay. The voice came from above them. It was the voice of Olinthus, who, surrounded by his Christian friends, stood upon an abrupt eminence on which the old Greek colonist had raised a temple to Apollo, now time-worn and half

in ruin.

As he spoke, there came that sudden illumination which had heralded the death of Arbaces, and glowing over the mighty multitude, awed, crouching, breathless-never on earth had the faces of men seemed so haggard!-never had meeting of mortal beings been so stamped with the horror and sublimity of dread!-never till the last trumpet sounds, shall such meeting be seen again! And above those the form of Olinthus, with outstretched arm and prophet brow, girt with the living fires. And the crowd knew the face of him they had doomed to the fangs of the beast-then their victim-now their warner; and through the stillness again came his ominous voice

66 The hour is come!"

The Christians repeated the cry. It was caught