he
happiness, or the trouble of being deprived of it; so that,
according to him, material fire is no part of the torments
of the damned; that there is no other fire prepared for them
but the fourth element, through which the bodies of all men
must pass; but that the bodies of the elect are changed into
an aetherial nature, and are not subject to the power of
fire: whereas, on the contrary, the bodies of the wicked are
changed into air, and suffer torments by the fire, because
of their contrary qualities. And for this reason 'tis that
the demons, who had a body of an aetherial nature, were
massed with a body of air, that they might feel the fire."
_Mackenzie's Scottish Writers_: vol. i., 49. All this may be
ingenious enough; of its truth, a future state only will be
the evidence. Very different from that of Scotus is the
language of Gregory Narienzen: "Exit in inferno frigus
insuperabile: ignis inextinguibilis: vermis immortalis:
fetor intollerabilis: tenebrae palpabiles: flagella
cedencium: horrenda visio demonum: desperatio omnium
bonorum." This I gather from the _Speculum Christiani_, fol.
37, printed by Machlinia, in the fifteenth century. The idea
is enlarged, and the picture aggravated, in a great number
of nearly contemporaneous publications, which will be
noticed, in part, hereafter. It is reported that some
sermons are about to be published, in which the personality
of Satan is questioned and denied. Thus having, by the
ingenuity of Scotus, got rid of the fire "which is never
quenched"--and, by means of modern scepticism, of the devil,
who is constantly "seeking whom he may devour," we may go on
comfortably enough, without such awkward checks, in the
commission of every species of folly and crime!]

This great and good man, the boast and the bulwark of his country, was
instructed by his mother, from infancy, in such golden rules of virtue
and good sense that one feels a regret at not knowing more of the
family, early years, and character, of such a parent. As she told him
that "a wise and a good man suffered no part of his time, but what is
necessarily devoted to bodily exercise, to pass in unprofitable
inactivity"--you may be sure that, with such book-propensities as he
felt, Alfred did not fail to make the most of the fleeting hour.
Accordingly we find, from h