The explosions succeeded each other with terrific rapidity about two in every three minutes; and the noise I can only compare to the roaring and hissing of ten thousand imprisoned winds, mingled at times with a rumbling sound like artillery, or distant thunder.  It frequently happened that the guides, in dashing their torches against the ground, set fire to the dried thorns and withered grass, and the blaze ran along the earth like wildfire, to the great alarm of poor L**, who saw in every burning bush a stream of lava rushing to overwhelm us.

Before eleven o’clock we reached the Hermitage, situated between Vesuvius and the Somma, and the highest habitation on the mountain.  A great number of men were assembled within, and guides, lazzaroni, servants, and soldiers, were lounging round.  I alighted, for I was benumbed and tired, but did not like to venture among those people, and it was proposed that we should wait for the rest of our party a little further on.  We accordingly left our donkeys and walked forward upon a kind of high ridge which serves to fortify the Hermitage and its environs against the lava.  From this path, as we slowly ascended, we had a glorious view of the eruption; and the whole scene around us, in its romantic interest and terrible magnificence, mocked all power of description.  There were, at this time, five distinct torrents of lava rolling down like streams of molten lead; one of which extended above two miles below us and was flowing towards Portici.  The showers of red-hot stones flew up like thousands of sky rockets:  many of them being shot up perpendicularly fell back into the crater, others falling on the outside bounded down the side of the mountain with a velocity which would have distanced a horse at full speed:  these stones were of every size, from two to ten or twelve feet in diameter.

My ears were by this time wearied and stunned by the unceasing roaring and hissing of the flames, while my eyes were dazzled by the glare of the red, fierce light:  now and then I turned them for relief to other features of the picture, to the black shadowy masses of the landscape stretched beneath us, and speckled with shining lights, which showed how many were up and watching that night; and often to the calm vaulted sky above our heads, where thousands of stars (not twinkling as through our hazy or frosty atmosphere, but shining out of “heaven’s profoundest azure,” with that soft steady brilliance peculiar to a highly rarified medium) looked down upon this frightful turmoil in all their bright and placid loveliness.  Nor should I forget one other feature of a scene, on which I looked with a painter’s eye.  Great numbers of the Austrian forces, now occupying Naples, were on the mountains, assembled in groups, some standing, some sitting, some stretched on the ground and wrapped in their cloaks, in various attitudes of amazement and admiration:  and as the shadowy glare fell on their tall martial figures and glittering accoutrements, I thought I had never beheld any thing so wildly picturesque.