It is impossible to exaggerate the horrors of the last day of the doomed city. The rumbling of the earth beneath; the dense obscurity and murky shadow of the heaven above; the long, heavy roll of the convulsed sea; the strident noise of the vapors and gases escaping from the mountain-crater; the shifting electric lights, crimson, emerald green, lurid yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before; the hot, hissing showers which descended like a rain of fire; the clash and clang of meeting rocks and riven stones; the burning houses and flaming vineyards; the hurrying fugitives, with wan faces and straining eyeballs, calling on those they loved to follow them; the ashes, and cinders, and boiling mud, driving through the darkened streets, and pouring into the public places; above all, that fine, impalpable, but choking dust which entered everywhere, penetrating even to the lowest cellar, and against which human skill could devise no effectual protection; all these things must have combined into a whole of such unusual and such awful terror that the imagination cannot adequately realize it. The stoutest heart was appalled; the best-balanced mind lost its composure. The stern Roman soldier stood rigidly at his post, content to die if discipline required it, but even his iron nerves quailed at the death and destruction around him. Many lost their reason, and wandered through the city, gibbering and shrieking lunatics. And none, we may be sure, who survived the peril, ever forgot the sights and scenes they had witnessed on that day of doom. Three days and nights were thus endured with all the anguish of suspense and uncertainty. On the fourth day the darkness, by degrees, began to clear away. The day appeared, the sun shining forth; but all nature seemed changed. Buried beneath the lava lay temple and circus, the tribunal, the shrine, the frescoed wall, the bright mosaic floor; but there was neither life nor motion in either city of the dead, though the sea which once bore their argosies still shimmered in the sunshine, and the mountain which accomplished their destruction still breathed forth smoke and fire. The scene was changed; all was over; smoke and vapor and showers had ceased, and Vesuvius had returned to its normal slumber. Pompeii and Herculaneum were no more. In their place was a desolated plain, with no monuments visible, no house to be seen--nothing but a great surface of white ashes, which hardened and petrified, and finally disintegrated into soil upon which, years after, might be seen the fruitful vine, the waving corn, and wild flowers in all their loveliness and beauty, hiding the hideous tragedy of a bygone age.