LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, Th,.. )3111, wer-Lyttons 'The Last Days of lished in 1834, has as its subject the destryction of Pompeii by fire, water, ashes and m the terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79'B7 the Christian era. The novel wan mainly written at Naples near the scene of the ancient calamity in order that all incidents per taining to it might be completely visualized, Bulwer climbed Mount Vesuvius, studied the excavations of the ruined city, and was sinner,. ally well prepared for the task by his keowl-, edge of the classical literatures.' It was his aim to restore the decadent life of Pomneii just before the destruction of the city, He reani mated, as it were, the skeletons found ill houses, baths, temples and forum, all of which places he minutely described. These old skele tons, clothed in flesh and blood, became the dramatis persona of his plot. Most of them were buried in the ruins; but the hero and heroine, Glaucus and Ione, escape by, the aid oaf Nydia, the Thessalian blind girl, and, being Greeks, retire to Athens. Nydia, hopelessly in
love with Glaucus, drowns herself in the sea. Among others who survived is Olinthus, the Christian, who converts Glaucus and lone to the new religion in which they are supremely happy.
Bulwer's novel annoys the reader of the present. day by its stilted style, its melodrama and its sentimentalism; but these and other grave faults cannot blind the critic to the fact that The Last Days of Pompeii' is the most successful novel we have dealing with ancient life and manners, so difficult to restore at all. The catastrophe which Bulwer chose for his theme at once interests and appalls; and the latt chapters, descriptive of the awful fate that overcame the inhabitants of Pompeii, reach a high level of vivid narration, quite sufficient to keep the novel alive.