59. In a short time the whole of the column turns into horrible shower of red hot rocks, flints, and ashes. Monstrous burning masses are seen bounding and rolling down the side of the mountain. Wo be to those places, which lie in the direction of the wind prevailing at the time of this tremendous shower! Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabix, three towns to the Southwest of Vesuvius, disappeared, about seventeen centuries ago, by a similar occurrence and it was only in this century (the eighteenth) that they were discovered. A column, such as that we have been describing, broke over them, and the land about them: they were buried more than fifty feet under a mass of ashes and calcined flints, which was farther covered by a bed of lava several feet deep. If the wind be violent the ashes are carried to an incredible distance.

$60. Rome and Venice, the former of which is a hundred and fifty miles from Vesuvius, and the latter double that distance, have been several times incommoded by its ashes. In our times, June 1794, all the South-east of Italy was covered by them. A letter written

by the Archbishop of Tarento, dated June 18, during the eruption, says, "We are covered with thick clouds of volcanic ashes." Some variation of the wind must have altered the first course of that light substance, as the archbishop in his letter presumed that they proceeded from Stromboli or Etna. Those clouds passed Tarento, which is more than two hundred and fifty miles from Vesuvius, went beyond Otranto, at the extremity of the province of Lecce, and were lost in the Mediterranean at the entrance of the Adriatic Sea, nearly four hundred miles distant from the point of their depar ture. This no doubt is prodigious: but that the tops of the houses at Constantinople, which is almost a thousand miles from Vesuvius, should have been covered four inches with its ashes, would have been difficult to believe, had not contemporary authors, some of whom were at the time living in that city, reported the fact, and uniformly dated it on the eleventh of November 472, at noon, when the people were attending the games of the Circus. (See P'Histoire du Bas Empire, tome 8, page 59). We are less surprised then to read that the ashes of Etna, which is three times as high as Vesuvius, and a little nearer to Egypt, reached Alexandria: a town, the inhabitants of which have lately witnessed an event, that, though of a different kind, must have appeared to them quite as extraordinary. At the Eastern confines of Africa, on the first of August 1798, they saw thunderbolts dart from the North-west of Europe, break suddenly over their shores, and in the course of a few hours completely destroy a powerful navy that rode at anchor before the town. I need not add, that the thunderbolts I mean were those of Great Britain, directed by Lord Nelson.'

In chapters 25, 26, 27, and 28, we are presented with an enumeration of the volcanoes known to be burning on the Globe; the total number of which is here estimated at 189. Of these, ninety-nine are on the continent, and ninety in islands.

The author afterward makes some observations on the general proximity of volcanoes to the Sea; and he remarks

that

that an extinguished volcano may be rekindled. In proof of this latter position, he cites the instance of Mount Vesuvius; which, after having been apparently extinguished for several centuries, took fire again in the reign of the Emperor Titus on the 24th of August 79, and produced that terrible eruption by which Pliny the Naturalist lost his life, and by which the cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiæ were in the same day overwhelmed with a shower of ashes.

Chap. 32. gives an account of the Mud Volcano at Mac. calouba; and in chap. 33. the discovery of a similar phænomenon, made by Dr. Pallas, is mentioned. We afterward find some very interesting remarks on submarine volcanoes; and we shall here give, in the words of the author, a description of the volcanic eruption of Santorin, in the year 1767.1

121. The eruption of 1767 took place between the Little Kamenoi, and the island of Hiera. It began in the month of June. The earth, after being shaken violently for some days by the action of fire, raised the sea in such a manner as to occasion a dread of its swallowing up all the islands thereabouts. A thick black smoke darkened the air, and infected it with so strong a stench of sulphur, that many persons and animals were suffocated by it. Black ashes, resembling gun-powder, fell all around. Torrents of flame, issuing from the sea, and waving on it to the height of several feet, lighted at intervals this horrible scene. The frightful mixture of different sounds, produced by all the elements in fury, froze every heart with a dread of the horrors which every instant might be the result of their conflict.

At length, after a labour of ten or twelve days, Nature paused, and the effect of her agitation was discovered in a new island, which had risen near the Little Kamenoi. There was no time lost in going to examine it. Many parts of it were still burning. It was a shapeless mass of baked substances, amalgamated by a lava, which, Father Gorée says, appeared to the eye like the crumb of fine bread. But the very next day the inquirers were compelled to relinquish this hasty curiosity, and betake themselves to flight. They felt the new soil moving it rose in some parts and sunk in others. The earth, sea, and sky soon resumed their formidable appearance. The symptoms appeared even to spread wider and to threaten worse. The boiling sea several times changed colour: flames, following one another without intermission, issued as from a vast furnace, but accompanied with ashes and pumice. The frightful noise of subterranean thunders was heard. It seemed as if enormous rocks, darting from the bottom of the abyss, beat against the vaults above it, and were alternately repelled and thrown up again: the repetition of their blows, says the author of the narrative, was distinctly heard. Some of them making or finding a passage, were seen flying up red-hot into the air, and again falling into the sea whence they had

Some account of this terrific event was also given in the 37th vol. of the M. R. (Old Series), p. 505, &c.

just

just been ejected. Masses were produced, held together for some days, and then disappeared. In this general disorder large portions of the Little Kamenoi were swallowed up. Meanwhile the labour of the volcano took a larger surface; its ejections became prodigiously abundant, and a new island was seen forming. By successive additions, continued for near four months, it made a junction with that produced in June. It was named the Black Island, from the colour of its soil. It is nearly twice as large as the Little Kamenoi, and is separated from it by a very narrow strait. The volcano continued creating alarm till the end of May in the following year; frequently shaking the earth and sea, and causing frightful noises. It even opened again, but only for a moment, on the 15th of April, and threw out a multitude of large burning rocks, which fell at the distance of two miles.

It is therefore proved by nine eruptions, recorded in history, that there exists a maritime volcano at Santorin. These eruptions have happened in the space of twenty-one centuries.'

Chapter 37. contains an account of the maritime volcanoes of the Azores, the effects of which appear to be equally tremendous with those of Santorin.-Some idea of these eruptions may be conceived from the following representation:

§ 123. In July 1638 near the island of St. Michael, where the sea was known to be a hundred and twenty feet deep, though at a very little distance farther the depth becomes almost suddenly more than nine hundred, there rose, after a labour of several weeks, an island, about six miles round. It was re-absorbed in about the same space of time as it had taken for its formation.

In 1691, from the 6th of July to the 12th of August, this volcano never ceased appearing in agitation, by internal thunders and shocks, that convulsed the island of St. Michael, and occasioned damage on it, by the heat and violent motions of the sea, and by eruptions of flames, ashes and pumice: but, in this instance, its ejections did not rise to the level of the Ocean; no new island appeared.

Nine and twenty years after, in 1720, amidst the most frightful complication of horrors, there rose an island, a little smaller than that of 1638, which, however, had sufficient height to be discovered at sea, from a distance of seven or eight leagues. It was observed to be in the same spot as that which had been occupied by the preceding ephemeral island, but that at the time of this new production, the sea above the summit of the volcanic mountain, was not more than ninety feet. The ruins of the former emissions had probably occasioned this difference: they perhaps also increased the difficulty of the labour of Nature; for so great was the disorder, according to the accounts that were published of this event, that many persons died of fright..

The account of these three eruptions are to be found in Buffon. They are more minutely described in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, of the year 1721; and they demonstrate the existence of a submarine volcano, near St. Michael's.

6

S.124. The

124. The eruption of 1757 discovered another of them to us in this cluster. It is, as we have said, eighty leagues distant from the other.

On the 9th of July, a little before midnight, St. George's, Pico, Fayal, three islands forming a closer group among themselves, being scarcely five leagues asunder, and Tercera, though double that distance from St. George's, were suddenly attacked at the same instant, and shaken to their foundations by horrible convulsions of the earth. The first shock lasted two whole, minutes. The raised Ocean no longer kept its shores. In this dreadful night many persons lost their lives, and these islands, hitherto fortunate, but at this fatal moment involved in the terrors of desolation, were covered with ruins. I pass over the particulars usual to these sad phænomena, the confused bellowings of land and water, the smoke and ashes which filled the air, and the flames issuing from the Ocean, to come to the result of this turbulent labour of Nature; which was the production of eighteen little islands, that rose insensibly from beneath the sea, at the distance of about ten yards from the North coast of St. George's. They disappeared in a few months, as those produced by the volcano of St. Michael had done before. The maritime peaks of the Azores have, according to all appearance, less surface than that of Santorin; whence I imagine proceed the instability of the productions of the former volcanoes, and the stability of those of the latter. It was observed that Flores, Corvo, St. Michael and St. Mary's, were not at all affected by the eruption of the volcano of St. George's, and that Graciosa suffered very little.'

In chapters 38 and 39, the Abbé treats of certain opinions concerning the formation of submarine volcanoes. In chapter 40. which concludes the work, we find some conjectures concerning the situation of the antient Atlantic territory, its extent, its destruction, the consequences that must have followed, and the reasons which have caused the conjecture that its ruin was produced by volcanic fires.

We have already observed that this work is extremely entertaining; and, as a compilation, it contains a great number of facts respecting volcanoes which may be of real use to science: but the author is evidently deficient in chemical and mineralogical knowlege,-though this deficiency is perceptible only in certain particulars, and therefore does not destroy the utility of the publication in a general point of view.

ART. V. The Man of Fortitude; or, Schedoni in England. By B. Frère. 12mo. 3 Vols. 10s. 6d. Boards. Wallis. 1801. THIS novel is a close, and not unsuccessful, imitation of

Mrs. Radcliffe's peculiar manner of wonder-working. The reader is kept in a continual state of agitation and horror, by the powerful engines of trap-doors, back-stairs, black robes,

and

and pale faces: but the solution of the enigma is ever too near at hand, to permit the indulgence of supernatural appearances. A well-written scene of a party at snap-dragon would exceed all the fearful images of this book. There is, besides, no keeping in the author's design: fright succeeds to fright, and danger to danger, without permitting the unhappy reader to draw his breath, or to repose for a moment on subjects of character or sentiment. In the second volume, a boxingmatch is introduced; and in the third, we find a ludicrous encounter with a supposed apparition: but these episodes are totally unconnected with the plot.

We are sorry to observe that the invention of our writers is nearly exhausted, in their ghostly narrations. Mr. Frère has attempted something original, in making a party of fearful adventurers mistake a coach with lamps for an apparition: but we apprehend that this fancy (which is not altogether new) will scarcely meet with approbation. Machines of a different nature might certainly be found. A Montgolfier, we know, alarmed all the hackney-coachmen in Paris in a dark night;—a descent from the clouds in a balloon might still astonish the ignorant inhabitants of remote villages; - and now that we have evidence of the existence of Mermaids *, an ingenious writer might provide himself with a tolerable ghost, to be viewed from the quarter-deck, or cabin-windows. We would recommend, also, the substitution of an old quarry for a game at hide and seek, instead of the east and west wings,' the marble slabs which echo to the steps of the Wandering Wight,' and the Sliding Pannels,' of which we are heartily tired; and to which we are so accustomed, that such "direness, familiar to our thoughts, cannot once startle us."-Should all these expedients fail, we must still think that a calf with a white face will produce much greater effect as an apparition, than a coach with lamps; and that a little of a man's own invention is worth a large portion of that which he borrows from others.

We shall present to our readers the following specimen of this writer's style:

Edmund, at first undetermined how to act, now arose, and went down to the next story. The room which he recognized as the apartment of his Adelaide, and which a few hours before was, as well as the rest of the house, involved in total darkness, was now, to his extreme surprise, in the middle of the night completely illuminated. He entered :--but the object which presented itself rivetted him to the spot.-Every function of his body, every sensation of his soul was

See Chisholm on the Yellow Fever, 2d edition, M. R. for December, p. 369.

suspended;