the remotest villages, with the perusal of such books as
were put into the juvenile hands of those who lived towards
the conclusion of the 15th century. One is at a loss to
conceive how the youth of that period could have ventured at
night out of doors, or slept alone in a darkened room,
without being frightened out of their wits! Nor could
maturer life be uninfluenced by reading such volumes as are
alluded to in the text: and as to the bed of death--_that_
must have sometimes shaken the stoutest faith, and disturbed
the calmest piety. For what can be more terrible, and at the
same time more audacious, than human beings arrogating to
themselves the powers of the deity, and denouncing, in
equivocal cases, a certainty and severity of future
punishment, equally revolting to scripture and common sense?
To drive the timid into desperation, and to cut away the
anchor of hope from the rational believer, seem, among other
things, to have been the objects of these "ascetic" authors;
while the pictures, which were suffered to adorn their
printed works, confirmed the wish that, where the reader
might not comprehend the text, he could understand its
illustration by means of a print. I will give two extracts,
and one of these "bizarre cuts," in support of the preceding
remarks. At page 168, ante, the reader will find a slight
mention of the subject: he is here presented with a more
copious illustration of it. "In likewise there is none that
may declare the piteous and horrible cries and howlings the
which that is made in hell, as well of devils as of other
damned. And if that a man demand what they say in crying;
the answer: All the damned curseth the Creator. Also they
curse together as their father and their mother, and the
hour that they were begotten, and that they were born, and
that they were put unto nourishing, and those that them
should correct and teach, and also those the which have been
the occasion of their sins, as the bawd, cursed be the bawd,
and also of other occasions in diverse sins. The second
cause of the cry of them damned is for the consideration
that they have of the time of mercy, the which is past, in
the which they may do penance and purchase paradise. The
third cause is of their cry for by cause of the horrible