and its vicinity, and a dreary world it appeared to me. An early tinge
of melancholy was thus infused into my character; and the dismal
stories of the monks, about devils and evil spirits, with which they
affrighted my young imagination, gave me a tendency to superstition,
which I could never effectually shake off. They took the same delight
to work upon my ardent feelings that had been so mischievously
exercised by my father's household.

I can recollect the horrors with which they fed my heated fancy during
an eruption of Vesuvius. We were distant from that volcano, with
mountains between us; but its convulsive throes shook the solid
foundations of nature. Earthquakes threatened to topple down our
convent towers. A lurid, baleful light hung in the heavens at night,
and showers of ashes, borne by the wind, fell in our narrow valley. The
monks talked of the earth being honey-combed beneath us; of Streams of
molten lava raging through its veins; of caverns of sulphurous flames
roaring in the centre, the abodes of demons and the damned; of fiery
gulfs ready to yawn beneath our feet. All these tales were told to the
doleful accompaniment of the mountain's thunders, whose low bellowing
made the walls of our convent vibrate.

One of the monks had been a painter, but had retired from the world,
and embraced this dismal life in expiation of some crime. He was a
melancholy man, who pursued his art in the solitude of his cell, but
made it a source of penance to him. His employment was to portray,
either on canvas or in waxen models, the human face and human form, in
the agonies of death and in all the stages of dissolution and decay.
The fearful mysteries of the charnel house were unfolded in his
labors--the loathsome banquet of the beetle and the worm.--I turn with
shuddering even from the recollection of his works. Yet, at that time,