plans of infinite wisdom; we feel the personal presence of that supreme Deity which you only imagine; to you belongs faith, to us knowledge; and our greatest delight results from the conviction that we are lights kindled by His light and that we belong to His substance.  To obey, to love, to wonder and adore, form our relations to the infinite Intelligence.  We feel His laws are those of eternal justice and that they govern all things from the most glorious intellectual natures belonging to the sun and fixed stars to the meanest spark of life animating an atom crawling in the dust of your earth.  We know all things begin from and end in His everlasting essence, the cause of causes, the power of powers.”

The low and sweet voice ceased; it appeared as if I had fallen suddenly upon the earth, but there was a bright light before me and I heard my name loudly called; the voice was not of my intellectual guide—­the genius before me was my servant bearing a flambeau in his hand.  He told me he had been searching me in vain amongst the ruins, that the carriage had been waiting for me above an hour, and that he had left a large party of my friends assembled in the Palazzo F—–.

DIALOGUE THE SECOND.  DISCUSSIONS CONNECTED WITH THE VISION IN THE COLOSAEUM.

The same friends, Ambrosio and Onuphrio, who were my companions at Rome in the winter, accompanied me in the spring to Naples.  Many conversations occurred in the course of our journey which were often to me peculiarly instructive, and from the difference of their opinions generally animated and often entertaining.  I shall detail one of these conversations, which took place in the evening on the summit of Vesuvius, and the remembrance of which from its connection with my vision in the Colosaeum has always a peculiar interest for me.  We had reached with some labour the edge of the crater and were admiring the wonderful scene around us.  I shall give the conversation in the words of the persons of the drama.

Philalethes.—­It is difficult to say whether there is more of sublimity or beauty in the scene around us.  Nature appears at once smiling and frowning, in activity and repose.  How tremendous is the volcano, how magnificent this great laboratory of Nature in its unceasing fire, its subterraneous lightnings and thunder, its volumes of smoke, its showers of stones and its rivers of ignited lava!  How contrasted the darkness of the scoriae, the ruins and the desolation round the crater with the scene below!  There we see the rich field covered with flax, or maize, or millet, and intersected by rows of trees which support the green and graceful festoons of the vine; the orange and lemon tree covered with golden fruit appear in the sheltered glens; the olive trees cover the lower hills; islands purple in the beams of the setting sun are scattered over the sea in the west, and the sky is tinted with red softening