So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic mask, floating on the
stream when it was hot and liquid, stamped its mimic features in it
as it hardened into stone; and now, it turns upon the stranger the
fantastic look it turned upon the audiences in that same theatre
two thousand years ago.
Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and in and out
of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers of the temples of
a religion that has vanished from the earth, and finding so many
fresh traces of remote antiquity: as if the course of Time had
been stopped after this desolation, and there had been no nights
and days, months, years, and centuries, since: nothing is more
impressive and terrible than the many evidences of the searching
nature of the ashes, as bespeaking their irresistible power, and
the impossibility of escaping them. In the wine-cellars, they
forced their way into the earthen vessels: displacing the wine and
choking them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, they forced
the ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and rained new ruin
even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the
skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible hail.
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