ther Church. Here lay one dying amid beads, crucifixes, and
shaven crowns. The devil was fleeing from the house in terror; and in
the compartment devoted to the spiritual world, the soul was following a
benevolent-looking gentleman, who carried a big key, and was walking in
the direction of a very magnificent mansion on a high hill, where, I
doubt not, a welcome and hospitable reception waited both. The same
lesson was repeated along the wall times without number.

Here was the doctrine of purgatory as incontestably proved as painted
flames, and images of creatures with tails who tormented other creatures
who had no tails, could prove it. If there was no purgatory, how could
the painters of an infallible Church ever have given so exact a
representation of it? And exact it must have been, else the priests
would never have allowed these pictures to be hung up here, under their
very eye. This was as much as to write "_cum privilegio_" underneath
them. The whole scenery of purgatory was here most vividly depicted.
There were fiends flying off with souls, or tossing them with pitchforks
into the flames. There were boiling cauldrons, red-hot gridirons,
cataracts of fire, and innumerable other modes of torment. A walk along
this infernal gallery was enough, one would have thought, to make the
boldest purgatory-despiser quail. But no one who has a little spare
cash, and is willing to part with it, need fear either purgatory or the
devil. In the large marble house in the centre of the square one might
buy at a reasonable rate an excision of some thousands of years from
his appointed sojourn in that gloomy region. And doubtless that was one
reason for bringing this purgatorial gallery and the indulgence-market
into such close proximity. It reminded the people of the latter
inestimable blessing; and without some such salutary impulse the traffic
in indulgences might flag.

I could not but remark, that the only person for whom these
extraordinary representations appeared to have any attractions was
myself. Not so the exhibition on the other side of the square. Having
perused with no ordinary interest, though, I fear, with not much profit,
this "Theory of a Future State," I crossed the quadrangle, passing right
under the eastern towers of the Cathedral, and came suddenly upon a knot
of persons gathered round a tall rectangular box, in which was enacting
the melo-drama of Punch. These persons were enjoying the fun with a
relish whic