In this dreadful situation they remained about twenty-five minutes, when the volcanic storm ceased all at once, and Vesuvius assumed a sullen silence. Sometime after the eruption had .ceased, the air continued greatly impregnated with electrical matter. The duke of Cottosiano told our author, that having, about half an hour after the great eruption had ceased, held a leaden bottle, armed with a pointed wire, out at his window at Naples, it soon became considerably charged: but whilst the eruption was in force, its appearance was toe alarming to allow any one to think of such experiments. He was informed also by the prince of Monte Mileto, that his son, the duke of Populi, who was at Monte Mileto on the 8th of August, had been alarmed by a shower of cinders that fell there, some of which he had sent to Naples, weighing two ounces; and that stones of an ounce weight had fallen upon an estate of his, ten miles farther off. Monte Mileto is about thirty miles from the volcano. The Abbe Cagliani also related, that his sister, a nun in a convent at Manfredonia, had written to inquire after him, imagining that Naples must have been destroyed, when they, at so great a distance, had been so much alarmed by a shower of ashes which fell on the city at eleven p. m. as to open all the churches, and go to prayers. As the great eruption began at nine, these ashes must have travelled 100 miles in two hours.

Nothing could be more dismal than the appearance of Ot-taiano after this eruption. Many of the houses were unroofed, and some lay half buried under the black scoriae and ashes; all the windows toward the mountain were broken, and some of the houses themselves burnt; the streets were choked up with ashes, and in some narrow places it was not less than four feet deep. A few of the inhabitants, who had just returned were employed in clearing them away, and piling then up in hillocks, to get at their ruined houses.

The palace of the prince of Ottaiano is situated on an eminence above the town, and nearer the mountain. The steps leading up to it were deeply covered with volcanic matter; the roof was totally destroyed, and the windows broken; but the house itself being strongly built, had not suffered much dilapidation. An incredible number of fragments of lava were thrown out during the eruption, some of which were of immense magnitude. The largest measured by Sir William Hamilton was 108 feet in circumference, and seventeen in height: this was thrown at least a quarter of a mile clear of the mouth of the volcano. Another, sixty-six feet in circumference, and nineteen in height, being nearly of a spherical figure, was thrown out at the same time, and fell near the former: this last had all the marks of being rounded, nay, almost polished, by continual exposure to rolling torrents, or the still rougher beat of a sea-shore. Our author conjectures that it might be a spherical volcanic salt, such as that of forty-five feet in circumference mentioned by M. de St. Fond, in his Treatise on Extinguished Volcanoes. A third, of sixteen feet in height, and ninety-two in circumference, was carried much farther, and lay in the valley between Vesuvius and the Hermitage: it appeared, also, from the large fragments that surrounded this mass, that it had been much larger while in the air.

Vesuvius continued to emit smoke for a considerable time after this great eruption, so that our author was apprehensive that another would soon ensue; but from that time nothing comparable to the above has taken place. From the period of this great eruption, to 1786, our informant kept an exact diary of the operations of Vesuvius, with drawings; which showed, by the comparative quantity of smoke emitted each time, the degree of fermentation within the volcano. The operations of these subterraneous fires, however, appear to be very capricious and uncertain: one day there will be the appearance of a violent fermentation, and the next every thing will be calmed; but whenever there has been a considerable ejection of scoriae and cinders, it has been constantly observed, that the lava soon made its appearance, either by boiling over the crater, or forcing its way through the crevices in the conical part of the mountain.

In the year 1794, there was a very tremendous eruption, and the mischief done was very considerable: the lava covered and totally destroyed 5000 acres of rich vineyards and cultivated land, and drove the inhabitanst of Torre del Greco from the town, a great part of the houses being either buried, or so injured as to be uninhabitable; the damage done in the vineyards by the ashes was also immense. Eruptions of this volcano also took place in 1804 and 1805; but this article will conclude by noticing only the eruption that happened on the evening of the 31st of May, 1806, when a bright flame rose from the mountain to the height of about 600 feet, sinking and rising alternately, and affording so clear a light, that a letter might have been read at the distance of a league round the mountain. On the following morning, without any earthquake preceding, as had been customary, the volcano began to eject inflamed substances from three new mouths, pretty near to each other, and about 650 feet from the summit. The 'ava took the direction of Torre del Greco and Annunciata, approaching Portici on the road leading from Naples to Pompeii.

Throughout the whole of the 2d of June, a noise was heard, resembling that of two armies engaged, when the discharges of artillery and musketry are very brisk. The current of lava now resembled a wall of glass in a state of fusion; sparks and flashes issuing from it from time to time with a. powerful detonation. Vines, trees, houses, in short, whatever objects it encountered oh its way, were instantly overthrown and destroyed. In one part, where it met with the resistance of a wall, it formed a cascade of fire. In a few days, Portici, Re-sina, and Torre del Greco, were covered with ashes thrown out by the volcano; and on the 9th, the two former places were deluged with a thick black rain, consisting of a species of mud, filled with sulphureous particles.

On the 1st of July, the ancient crater had wholly disappeared, being filled with ashes and lava, and a new one was formed in the eastern part of the mountain, about 600 feet in depth, and having about the same width at the opening. Several persons, on the above day, descended about half way down this new mouth, and remained half an hour very near the flames, admiring the spectacle presented by the liquid lava, which bubbled up at the bottom of the crater, like the fused matter in a glasshouse. This eruption continued until September, made great ravages, and was considered as one of the most terrible that occurred within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. Sir William Hamilton observes, that the inhabitants of Naples, in general, pay so little attention to the operations of this olcano, that many of its eruptions pass unnoticed by at least two-thirds of them. It is remarkable to observe, with what readiness and sang froid they inhabit the towns and villas on the brow of the mountain, and how quickly they return to spots which have suffered the most se-verely. The inhabitants are not much alarmed by a stream of lava, which moves slowly, from .which they can always remove, and carry off their moveable property; their greatest danger consists in the clouds of burning ashes, which fly to a great distance, and the fall of which can neither be anticipated nor avoided.