Such was this mansion, in which no doubt the owner took pride and pleasure, to judge from the expense lavished with unsparing hand on its decoration; and if he could be supposed to have any cognizance of what is now passing on earth, his vanity might find some consolation for having been prematurely deprived of it, in the posthumous celebrity which it has obtained. But his taste and wealth have done nothing to perpetuate his name, for not a trace remains that can indicate to what person or to what family it belonged. It is indeed usually called the Villa of Marcus Arius Diomedes, on the strength of a tomb discovered about the same period immediately opposite to it, bearing that name. No other tomb had then been discovered so near it, and on this coincidence of situation a conclusion was drawn that this must have been a family sepulchre, attached to the house, and, by consequence, that the house itself belonged to Diomedes. The conjecture at the outset rested but on a sandy foundation, which has since been entirely sapped by the discovery of numerous other tombs almost equally near. All that we know of the owner or his family may be comprised in one sentence, which, short as it is, speaks forcibly to our feelings. Their life was one of elegant luxury and enjoyment, in the midst of which death came on them by surprise, a death of singular and lingering agony. When Vesuvius first showed signs of the coming storm the air was still, as we learn from the description of Pliny, and the smoke of the mountain rose up straight, until the atmosphere would bear it no higher, and then spread on all sides into a canopy, suggesting to him the idea of an enormous pine tree. After this a wind sprung up from the west, which was favorable to carry Pliny from Misenum to Stabiæ, but prevented his return. The next morning probably it veered something to the north, when, in the younger Pliny's words, a cloud seemed to descend upon the earth, to cover the sea, and hide the Isle of Capreæ from his view. The ashes are said by Dion Cassius to have reached Egypt, and in fact a line drawn southeast from Vesuvius would pass very near Pompeii, and cut Egypt. It was probably at this moment that the hail of fire fell thickest at Pompeii, at daybreak on the second morning, and if any had thus long survived the stifling air and torrid earth which surrounded them, their misery probably was at this moment brought to a close. The villa of which we speak lay exactly between the city and the mountain, and must have felt the first, and, if there were degrees of misery, where all perished alike, the worst effects of this fearful visitation. Fearful is such a visitation in the present day, even to those who crowd to see an eruption of Vesuvius as they would to a picture-gallery or an opera; how much more terrible, accompanied by the certainty of impending death, to those whom neither history nor experience had familiarized with the most awful phenomenon presented by nature.