d on spots
that thrilled the hearts of Hercules and Ulysses with awe. There the
terrible Avernus, to which the descent was so easy, sleeps in its deep
basin, long ago divested by the axe of Agrippa of the impenetrable
gloom and mysterious dread which its dark forests had created; its
steep banks partly covered with natural copsewood bright with a living
mosaic of cyclamens and lilies, and partly formed of cultivated
fields. During my visit the delicious odour of the bean blossom
pervaded the fields, reminding me vividly of familiar rural scenes far
away. Yonder is the subterranean passage called by the common people
the Sibyl's Cave, where AEneas came and plucked the golden bough, and,
led by the melancholy priestess of Apollo, went down to the dreary
world of the dead. It was the general tradition of Pagan nations that
the point of departure from this world, as well as the entrance to the
next, was always in the west. We find the largest number of the
prehistoric relics of the dead on the western shores of our own
country. The cave of Loch Dearg--at first connected with primitive
pagan rites and subsequently the traditional entrance to the Purgatory
of St. Patrick--is situated in the west of Ireland, and corresponds to
the cave of the Sibyl and the Lake of Avernus in Italy. Indeed the
word Avernus itself bears such a close resemblance to the Gaelic word
Ifrinn--the name of the infernal regions, and to the name of Loch
Hourn, the Lake of Hell, on the north-west coast of Scotland--that it
has given rise to the supposition that it was the legacy of a
prehistoric Celtic people who at one time inhabited the Phlegraean
Fields. On the other side of Lake Avernus is the Mare Morto, the Lake
or Sea of the Dead, with its memories of Charon and his ghostly crew,
which now shines in the setting sun like a field of gold sparkling
with jewels; and beyond it are the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the
blessed, the rich life of whose soil breaks out at every pore into a
luxuriant maze of vines and orange trees, and all manner of lovely and
fruitful vegetation. Still farther behind is the Acherusian Marsh of
the poets, now called the Lake of Fusaro, because hemp and flax are
put to steep in it; and the river Styx itself, by which the gods dare
not swear in vain, reduced to an insignificant rill flowing into the
sea. It is most interesting to think of the apostle Paul being
associated with this enchanted region. His presence on the scene is