DR. C. L. GOODELL, at the First Congregational Church, describes his visit to Vesuvius last month as follows:— "Leaving your carriage at the mountain railway, you enter the car. The ascent is very steep and at one place almost perpendicular. The road makes no curve. The car moves rapidly, and in ten minutes you are within less than a half-hour's walk of the crater. You mount a chair, and four stalwart mountaineers bear you through smoke and steam, midst the rumbling of the volcano and the melted lava, to the very edge of the bowl, in which, as in a mighty cauldron, the fiery mass seethes and rocks and thunders and foams. It is terrifically grand. The mountain seems filled with surging fire that rises up every half minute in awful explosion, throwing up columns of smoke dark as midnight and streaked with lurid fire. This melted matter falls back with crashing, fearful sound, lodging in part on the edge of the crater. Before you are recovered from one stunning sensation, another explosion breaks on you, more overpowering than before, the steam coming up through every crevice at your feet, and the whole summit is enveloped in cloud. The red lava, as it is thrown high in air in massive form, seems heated in the furnace of Vulcan, and as it falls back down into the boiling sea of fire, the sight is no more terrible than the noise is astounding. The crater seems like a mighty pit of liquid fire thrown up in burning waves from side to side, scorching, blistering, and tearing all before it. How can the mountain endure such a strain? How can the eye bear such blinding brilliance of vast masses of fire? The crater is two miles in circumference, and you must make the circuit. The terror of the upheaving fire, and shower of ashes, and smoke, and stones, does not abate. The trembling of the mountain strikes terror into strong nerves. You remember the tragical death of the elder Pliny nearly 2,000 years ago, and the thousands that have been destroyed since. The explosions continue to deafen you. You remember the lone city of Pompeii, where you have spent the morning, and you decide not to spend the summer there. It is the most sublime scene I ever witnessed. Nothing before ever made so deep and tremendous an impression. It is the most active volcano in the world. Smoke never ceases to float off from it as a long pennant from the head, and the crater never fails to show fire to those who visit it, and it may be seen almost every night from Naples. But on this bright day in March it spoke with a tongue of fire and a blackness of darkness never to be forgotten. Its words were red-hot bowlders, and its periods were ribbons of crimson.—St. Louis Globe-Democrat.