We came out from under the solemn mysteries of this city of the Venerable Past—this city which perished, with all its old ways and its quaint old fashions about it, remote centuries ago, when the Disciples were preaching the new religion, which is as old as the hills to us now—and went dreaming among the trees that grow over acres and acres of its still buried streets and squares, till a shrill whistle and the cry of “All aboard—last train for Naples!” woke me up and reminded me that I belonged in the nineteenth century, and was not a dusty mummy, caked with ashes and cinders, eighteen hundred years old. The transition was startling. The idea of a railroad train actually running to old dead Pompeii, and whistling irreverently, and calling for passengers in the most bustling and businesslike way, was as strange a thing as one could imagine, and as unpoetical and disagreeable as it was strange.
Compare the cheerful life and the sunshine of this day with the horrors the younger Pliny saw here, the 9th of November, AD 79, when he was so bravely striving to remove his mother out of reach of harm, while she begged him, with all a mother’s unselfishness, to leave her to perish and save himself.
“By this time the murky darkness had so increased that one might have believed himself abroad in a black and moonless night, or in a chamber where all the lights had been extinguished. On every hand was heard the complaints of women, the wailing of children, and the cries of men. One called his father, another his son, and another his wife, and only by their voices could they know each other. Many in their despair begged that death would come and end their distress.
“Some implored the gods to succor them, and some believed that this night was the last, the eternal night which should engulf the universe!
“Even so it seemed to me—and I consoled myself for the coming death with the reflection: Behold, the World is passing away!”
After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii, and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial, unlasting character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time, and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory, in generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died, happy in the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name. Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these things? A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare name (which they spell wrong)—no history, no tradition, no poetry—nothing that can give it even a passing interest. What may be left of General Grant’s great name forty centuries hence? This—in the Encyclopedia for AD 5868, possibly:
“Uriah S. (or Z.) Graunt—popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about AD 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a cotemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about AD 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote ‘Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.’ ”
These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.
XXXII
At sea once more—The pilgrims all well—Superb stromboli—Sicily by moonlight—Scylla and Charybdis—The “Oracle” at fault—Skirting the Isles of Greece—Ancient Athens—Blockaded by quarantine and refused permission to enter—Running the blockade—A bloodless midnight adventure—Turning robbers from necessity—Attempt to carry the Acropolis by storm—We fail—Among the glories of the past—A world of ruined sculpture—A fairy vision—Famous localities—Retreating in good order—Captured by the guards—Travelling in military state—Safe on board again.
Home, again! For the first time, in many weeks, the ship’s entire family met and shook hands on the quarterdeck. They had gathered from many points of the compass and from many lands, but not one was missing; there was no tale of sickness or death among the flock to dampen the pleasure of the reunion. Once more there was a full audience on deck to listen to the sailors’ chorus as they got the anchor up, and to wave an adieu to the land as we sped away from Naples. The seats were full at dinner again, the domino parties were complete, and the life and bustle on the upper deck in the fine moonlight at night was like old times—old times that had been gone weeks only, but yet they were weeks so crowded with incident, adventure and excitement, that they seemed almost like years. There was no lack of cheerfulness on board the Quaker City. For once, her title was a misnomer.
At seven in the evening, with the western horizon all golden from the sunken sun, and specked with distant ships, the full moon sailing high over head, the dark blue of the sea under foot, and a strange sort of twilight affected by all these different lights and colors around us and about us, we sighted superb Stromboli. With what majesty the monarch held his lonely state above the level sea! Distance clothed him in a purple gloom, and added a veil of shimmering mist that so softened his rugged features that we seemed to see him through a web of silver gauze. His torch was out; his fires were smoldering; a tall column of smoke that rose up and lost itself in the growing moonlight was all the sign he gave that he was a living Autocrat of the Sea and not the spectre of a dead
