12 Parsons's trans. Dell' Inferno, canto iv. ii. 55-63.
mountainous shapes half buried in rocks, encrusting lava, and ashes. Rivers of fire seam the darkness, whose borders are braided with sentinel furies. On every hand the worst criminals, perjurers, blasphemers, ingrates, groan beneath the pitiless punishments inflicted on them without escape. Any realization of the terrific scenery of this whole realm would curdle the blood.13 There were fabled entrances to the dread under world at Acherusia, in Bithynia, at Avernus, in Campania, where Ulysses evoked the dead and traversed the grisly abodes, through the Sibyl's cave at Cuma, at Hermione, in Argolis, where the people thought the passage below so near and easy that they neglected to give the dying an obolus to pay ferriage to Charon, at Tanarus, the southern most point of Peloponnesus, where Herakles went down and dragged the three headed dog up into day, at the cave of Trophonius, in Lebadea, and at several other places.
Similar conceptions have been embodied in the ecclesiastical doctrine which has generally prevailed in Christendom. Locating the scene in the hollow of the earth, thus has it been described by Milton,
"A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of anguish, doleful shades, where peace Nor hope can come, but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever burning sulphur unconsumed;" wherein, confined by adamantine walls, the fallen angels and all the damned welter overwhelmed with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Shapes once celestially fair and proud, but now scarred from battle and darkened by sin into faded forms of haggard splendor, support their uneasy steps over the burning marl. Everywhere shrieks and moans resound, and the dusky vault of pandemonium is lighted by a blue glare cast pale and dreadful from the tossings of the flaming lake. This was hell, where the wicked must shrink and howl forever. Etna, Vesuvius, Stromboli, Hecla, were believed to be vent holes from this bottomless and living pit of fire. The famous traveller, Sir John Maundeville, asserted that he found a descent into hell "in a perilous vale" in the dominions of Prester John. Many a cavern in England still bears the name of "Hell hole." In a dialogue between a clerk and a master, preserved in an old Saxon catechism, the following question and reply occur: "Why is the sun so red when she sets?" "Because she looks down upon hell." Antonius Rusca, a learned professor at Milan, in the year 1621, published a huge quarto in five books, giving a detailed topographical account of the interior of the earth, hell, purgatory, and limbo.14 There is a lake in the south of Ireland in which is an island containing a cavern said to open down into hell. This cave
13 Descriptions of the sufferings of hell, according to the popular notions at different periods, are given in the work published at Weimar in 1817, Das Rad der ewigen Hollenqual. In den Curiositaten der physisch literarisch artistisch historischen Vor und Mitwelt, band vi. st. 2.
14 De Inferno et Statn Damonum ante Mundi Exitium.
is called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the pretence obtained quite general credit for upwards of five centuries. Crowds of pilgrims visited the place. Some who had the hardihood to venture in were severely pinched, beaten, and burned, by the priests within, disguised as devils, and were almost frightened out of their wits by the diabolical scenes they saw where
"Forth from the depths of flame that singed the gloom Despairing wails and piercing shrieks were heard."
Several popes openly preached in behalf of this gross imposition; and the Church virtually authorized it by receiving the large revenues accruing from it, until at last outraged common sense demanded its repudiation and suppression.15
Few persons now, as they walk the streets and fields, are much disturbed by the thought that, not far below, the vivid lake of fire and brimstone, greedily roaring for new food, heaves its tortured surges convulsed and featured with souls. Few persons now shudder at a volcanic eruption as a premonishing message freshly belched from hell.16 In fact, the old belief in a local physical hell within the earth has almost gone from the public mind of to day. It arose from pagan myths and figures of speech based on ignorant observation and arbitrary fancy, and with the growth of science and the enlightenment of reason it has very extensively fallen and faded away. No honest and intelligent inquirer into the matter can find the slightest valid support for such a notion. It is now a mere tradition, upheld by groundless authority. And yet the dim shadow of that great idea of a subterranean hell which once burned so fierce and lurid in the brain of Christendom still vaguely haunts the modern world. The dogma still lies in the prevalent creeds, and is occasionally dragged out and brandished by fanatic preachers. The transmitted literature and influences of the past are so full of it that it cannot immediately cease. Accordingly, while the common understanding no longer grasps it as a definite verity, it lingers in the popular fancy as a half credible image. The painful attempts made now and then by some antiquated or fanatical clergyman to compel attention to it and belief in it as a tangible fact of science, as well as an unquestionable revelation of Scripture, scarcely win a passing notice, but provoke a significant smile. Father Passaglia, an eminent Jesuit theologian, in 1856 published in Italy a work on the Literality of Hell Fire and the Eternity of the Punishments of the Damned. He says, "In this world fire burns by chemical operations; but in hell it burns by the breath of the Lord!" The learned and venerable Faber, a voluminous author and distinguished English divine, published in the year 1851 a large octavo entitled "The Many Mansions in the House of the Father," discussing with elaborate detail the question as to the locality of the scenes awaiting souls after death. His grand conclusion the unreasonableness of which will be apparent without comment is as follows: "The saints having first risen with Christ into the highest regions of the air, out of reach of the dreadful heat, the tremendous flood of fire hitherto detained inside the earth will be let loose, and an awful conflagration rage till the whole material globe is dissipated into sublimated particles. Then the world will be formed anew, in three parts. First, there will be