DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61277#0108
84<
RUINS OF POMPEII.
escaping from the lava which pursued them, the
ashes were here more rapid and more destructive,
and had, in a very short time, overwhelmed all
Pompeii,* together with the greater part of its
population: the prince and the subject—the mas-
ter- and servant—the father and daughter, were
momentarily hurried in one common tomb !
The great road that leads to this place appears
to be cut level with its soil. On approaching it,
we beheld a little elevation to the left: it was
Pompeii—but Pompeii swallowed up ; for but a
small portion, comparatively speaking, has yet
been laid open. You descend but a few feet to
enter a city built by the Romans; you pass along
the solitary streets ; you visit the deserted houses
of the inhabitants,
“ Whose echo and whose empty tread
Resemble voices from the dead j”
* When we consider that this bed of ashes was, in some places,
scarcely more than three feet in depth, it appears wonderful that
the town was not discovered long before the middle of the last
century, or rather that the ashes were not removed, and the city
restored, immediately after its catastrophe; and, reflecting on this
circumstance, one is sometimes ready to exclaim, “ Had its unfor-
tunate inhabitants no friends in any of the neighbouring villages,
who possessed courage enough to rescue them from the tomb in
which they were buried alive ? Or, why did not the government
of that day exert its influence, and recur to the means necessary
for such an undertaking ?”
RUINS OF POMPEII.
escaping from the lava which pursued them, the
ashes were here more rapid and more destructive,
and had, in a very short time, overwhelmed all
Pompeii,* together with the greater part of its
population: the prince and the subject—the mas-
ter- and servant—the father and daughter, were
momentarily hurried in one common tomb !
The great road that leads to this place appears
to be cut level with its soil. On approaching it,
we beheld a little elevation to the left: it was
Pompeii—but Pompeii swallowed up ; for but a
small portion, comparatively speaking, has yet
been laid open. You descend but a few feet to
enter a city built by the Romans; you pass along
the solitary streets ; you visit the deserted houses
of the inhabitants,
“ Whose echo and whose empty tread
Resemble voices from the dead j”
* When we consider that this bed of ashes was, in some places,
scarcely more than three feet in depth, it appears wonderful that
the town was not discovered long before the middle of the last
century, or rather that the ashes were not removed, and the city
restored, immediately after its catastrophe; and, reflecting on this
circumstance, one is sometimes ready to exclaim, “ Had its unfor-
tunate inhabitants no friends in any of the neighbouring villages,
who possessed courage enough to rescue them from the tomb in
which they were buried alive ? Or, why did not the government
of that day exert its influence, and recur to the means necessary
for such an undertaking ?”