genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand. He told
me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage
had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party
of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F---.




DIALOGUE THE SECOND. DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE
COLOSAEUM.


The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome
in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples. Many
conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to
me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions
generally animated and often entertaining. I shall detail one of these
conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius,
and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the
Colosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me. We had reached with
some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene
around us. I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of
the drama.

_Philalethes_.--It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity
or beauty in the scene around us. Nature appears at once smiling and
frowning, in activity and repose. How tremendous is the volcano, how
magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its
subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers
of stones and its rivers of ignited lava! How contrasted the darkness of