the late Eruption of Mount Vesuvius. 111 
sea by volcanic explosions, and the probability of there being a 
much greater portion under the same predicament, as yet un- 
explored, the vain pretensions of weak mortals to counteract 
such great operations, carried on surely for the wisest purposes 
by the beneficent Author of nature, appear to me to be quite 
ridiculous. 
Let us then content ourselves with seeing, as well as we can, 
what we are permitted to see, and reason upon it to the best 
of our limited understandings, well assured that whatever is, 
is right. 
The late sufferers at Torre del Greco, although his Sicilian 
Majesty, with his usual clemency, offered them a more secure 
spot to rebuild their town on, are obstinately employed in re- 
building it on the late and still smoking lava that covers their 
former habitations ; and there does not appear to be- any situa- 
tion more exposed to the numerous dangers that must attend 
the neighbourhood of an active yolcano than that of Torre del 
Greco. It was totally destroyed in 1631 ; and in the year 
1737 a dreadful lava ran within a few yards of one of the gates 
of the town, and now over the middle of it ; nevertheless, 
such is the attachment of the inhabitants to their native spot, 
although attended with such imminent danger, that of 18000 
not one gave his vote to abandon it. When I was in Calabria, 
during the earthquakes in 1783, I observed in the Calabrese 
the same attachment to native soil ; some of the towns that 
were totally destroyed by the earthquakes, and which had 
been ill situated in every respect, and in a Bad air, were to be 
rebuilt ; and yet it required the authority of government to- 
oblige the inhabitants of those ruined towns to change their 
situation for a much better. 
