wheel that turns incessantly, the stream that tempts and flies, the stone that rolls back the more we would impel it on--these are but feeble images of that dread thought, the impossible, the irreparable!" A deep silence now reigned around Oswald and Corinne; their very guides were far behind; and near the crater naught was heard save the hissing of its fires; suddenly, however, one sound from the city reached even this region--the chime of bells, perhaps announcing a death, perhaps a birth, it mattered not--most welcome was it to our travellers. "Dear Oswald," said Corinne, "let us leave this desert, and return to the living world. _Other_ mountains raise us above terrestrial life, and bring us nearer Heaven, but here nature seems treated as a criminal, and condemned no more to taste the beneficent breath of her Creator. This is no sojourn for the good--let us descend." An abundant shower fell as they sought the plain, threatening each instant to extinguish their torches: the Lazzaroni accompanied them with yells that might alarm any one who knew not that such was their constant custom. These men are sometimes agitated by a superfluity of life, with which they know not what to do, uniting equal degrees of violence and sloth. Their physiognomy, more marked, than their characters, seem to indicate a kind of vivacity in which neither mind nor heart are at all concerned. Oswald, uneasy lest the rain should hurt Corinne, and lest their lights should fail, was absorbed by this indefinite sense of her danger; and his tenderness by degrees restored that composure which had been disturbed by the confidence he had made to her. They regained their carriage at the foot of the mountain, and stopped not at the ruins of Herculaneum, which are, as it were, buried afresh beneath the buildings of Portici. They arrived at Naples near midnight, and Corinne promised Nevil, as they took leave, to give him the history of her life on the morrow. CHAPTER II.