The denouement of the scene is the same in the novel and the poem--a statue, hurled from its pedestal, strikes the unhallowed violator to the earth. There is no scene in Baron more actually transcribed from the Andrian of Terence than this from 'The Last Night of Pompeii!' But the scene in the amphitheatre, where the Christian Olinthus and the lover Glaucus are doomed to perish by the fangs of the famished lion, is still more strikingly similar than any in the novel, except the description of the destruction. Arbaces, actuated by unholy love of Ione, is the author of the disgrace and ruin of both these personages; and the prætor Diomede, in the poem, resolves to sacrifice Pansa to the African lion, because he loves and determines to possess Mariamne. The earlier scenes in the amphitheatre are the same; four gladiators are represented in sanguinary strife, and two as having perished, ere the command is given to bring the Christian and lover on the arena, and to loose the Numidian lion. In neither instance, however, will the noble beast attack his destined victim; but shrinks and cowers in utter terror, though goaded on to his dreadful feast. We now solicit a careful comparison of the scenes which succeed, with those which, nearly two years before Mr. Bulwer's book was conceived, we had wrought out with no slight study, and presented to our unregarding countrymen. The closing scene in the Pompeiian amphitheatre, as represented in 'The Last _Days_ of Pompeii:' "'Behold how the gods protect the guiltless! The fires of the avenging Orcus burst forth against the false witness of my accusers!'" "The eyes of the crowd followed the gesture of the Egyptian, and beheld with ineffable dismay a vast vapor shooting from the summit of Vesuvius in the form of a gigantic pine tree; the trunk, blackness;--the branches, fire;--that shifted and wavered in its hues with every moment, now fiercely luminous, now of a dull and dying red, that again blazed terrifically forth with intolerable glare! "There was a dead, heart-sunken silence--through which there suddenly broke the roar of the lion, which, from within the building, was echoed back by the sharper and fiercer yells of its follow beasts. Dread seers were they of the burthen of the atmosphere, and wild prophets of the wrath to come! "Then there rose on high the universal shrieks of women; the men stared at each other, but were dumb. At that moment they felt the earth shake beneath their feet; the walls of the theatre trembled; and beyond, in the distance, they heard the crash of falling roofs; an instant more, and the mountain cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a torrent; at the same time, it cast forth from its bosom a shower of ashes, mixed with vast fragments of burning stone! Over the crushing vines,--over the desolate streets,--over the amphitheatre itself,--far and wide,--with many a mighty splash in the agitated sea,--fell that awful shower!