054 



KEFLECTIONS ON THE BUEIED CITIES. 



[Ch. XXV. 



heaven's breath smells sweet and wooingly — a vigorous and 

 luxuriant nature unparalleled in its productions — a coast 

 which, was once the fairy-land of poets, and the favourite re- 

 treat of great men. Even the tyrants of the creation loved 

 this alluring region, spared it, adorned it, lived in it, died in 

 it/* The inhabitants, indeed, have enjoyed no immunity 

 from the calamities which are the lot of mankind ; but the 

 principal evils which they have suffered must be attributed 

 to moral, not to physical, causes — to disastrous events over 

 which man might have exercised a control, rather than to 

 the inevitable catastrophes which result from subterranean 

 agency. When Spartacus encamped his army of ten thou- 

 sand gladiators in the old extinct crater of Vesuvius, the 

 volcano was more justly a subject of terror to Campania than 

 it has ever been since the rekindling: of its fires. 



* Forsyth's Italy, vol. ii. 



