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The Last Days of Pompeii

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Edward Bulwer Lytton

The Last Days of Pompeii

Paperback (Forgotten Books July 3, 2012)
City, which, Jmore perhaps than either the delicious breeze or the cloudless sun, the violet valleys and orange-groves of the South, attract the traveller to Naples; on viewing, still fresh and vivid, the houses, the streets, the temples, the theatres of a place existing in the haughtiest age of the Roman empire it was not unnatural, perhaps, that a writer who had before laboured, however unworthily, in the art to revive and create, should feel a keen desire to people once more those deserted streets, to repair those graceful ruins, to reanimate the bones which were yet spared to his survey; to traverse the gulf of eighteen centuries, and to wake to a second existence the City of the Dead! Pompeii !A nd the reader will easily imagine how sensibly this desire grew upon one who felt he could perform his undertaking, with Pompeii itself at the distance of a few miles the sea that once bore her commerce, and received her fugitives, at his feet and the fatal mountain of Vesuvius, still breathing forth smoke and fire, constantly before his eyes !I was aware, however, from the first of the great difficulties with which I had to contend. To paint the manners and exhibit the life of the middle ages, required the hand of a master genius; yet, perhaps, the task is slight and easy in comparison with that which aspires to portray a far earlier and more unfamiliar period. With the men and customs of the feudal time we have a natural sympathy and bond of alliance ;those men were our own ancestors from those customs we received our own the creed of our chivalric fathers is still ours their tombs yet consecrate our churches the ruins of their castles yet frown over our valleys. We trace in their struggles for liberty and for justice our present institutions ;and in the elements of their social state we behold the origin of our own. Yet the task, though arduous, seemed to me
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
ISBN
1451014988 / 9781451014983
Pages
384
Weight
23.04 oz.
Dimensions
6.0 x 0.87 in.

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