THE PROGRESS OF THE DESTRUCTION.
THE cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over the day, had now settled into a solid and impenetrable mass. It resembled less even the thickest gloom of a night in the open air than the close and blind darkness of some narrow room. But in proportion as the blackness gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes. Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky--now of a livid and snakelike green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of an enormous serpent--now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lightin
