he sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid.

"I take it from a holier source: St. Gregory," said Jerome sternly.

"Like enough," replied Colonna drily. "But St. Gregory was not so nice;
he took it from Virgil. Some souls, saith Gregory, are purged by fire,
others by water, others by air.

"Says Virgil--

'Aliae panduntur inanes,
Suspensae ad ventous, aliis sub gurgite vasto
Infectum eluitur scelus, aut exuritur igni.'

But peradventure, you think Pope Gregory I lived before Virgil, and
Virgil versified him.

"But the doctrine is Eastern, and as much older than Plato as Plato
than Gregory. Our prayers for the dead came from Asia with Aeneas. Ovid
tells, that when he prayed for the soul of Anchises, the custom was
strange in Italy.

'Hunc morem Aeneas, pietatis idoneus auctor
Attulit in terras, juste Latine, tuas.'

The 'Biblicae' Sortes,' which I have seen consulted on the altar, are
a parody on the 'Sortes Virgilianae.' Our numerous altars in one church
are heathen: the Jews, who are monotheists, have but one altar in a
church. But the Pagans had many, being polytheists. In the temple of
Pathian Venus were a hundred of them. 'Centum que Sabaeo thure calent
arae.' Our altar's and our hundred lights around St. Peter's tomb are
Pagan. 'Centum aras posuit vigilemque sacraverat ignem.' We invent
nothing, not even numerically. Our very Devil is the god Pan, horns and
hoofs and all; but blackened. For we cannot draw; we can but daub the
figures of Antiquity with a little sorry paint or soot. Our Moses hath
stolen the horns of Ammon; our Wolfgang the hook of Saturn; and Janus
bore the keys of heaven before St. Peter. All our really old Italian
bronzes of the Virgin and Child are Venuses and Cupids. So is the wooden
statue, that stands hard by this house, of Pope Joan and the child
she is said to have brought forth there in the middle of a procession.
Idiots! are new-born children thirteen years old? And that boy is not a
day younger. Cupid! Cupid! Cupid! And since you accuse me of credulity,
know that to my mind that Papess is full as mythological, born of froth,
and every way unreal, as the goddess who passes for her in the next
street, or as the saints you call St. Baccho and St. Quirina: or St.
Oracte, which is a dunce-like corruption of Mount Soracte, or St.
Amphibolus, an English saint, which is a dunce-like corruption of the
cloak worn by their St. Alban, Or as the Spanish saint, St. Viar: which