this
was never an earnest general faith. It was a poetic superstition
that hovered over fanciful brains, a legendary dream that pleased
credulous hearts; and, with the other romance of the early world,
it has vanished quite away.

The popular belief of Jews, Greeks, Etruscans, Romans, Germans,
and afterwards of Christians, was that there was an immense world
of the dead deep beneath the earth, subdivided into several
subordinate regions. The Greenlanders believed in a separated
heaven and hell, both located far below the Polar Ocean. According
to the old classic descriptions of the under world, what a scene
of colossal gloom it is! Its atmosphere murmurs with a breath of
plaintive sighs. Its population, impalpable ghosts timidly
flitting at every motion,

11 Irving, Life of Columbus: Appendix on the Situation of the
Terrestrial Paradise. By far the most valuable book ever published
on this subject is that of Schulthess, Das Paradies, das irdische
und uberirdische historische, mythische und mystische, nebst einer
kritischen Revision der allgemelnen biblischen Geographie.

crowd the sombre landscapes in numbers surpassing imagination.
There Cocytus creeps to the seat of doom, his waves emitting
doleful wails. Styx, nine times enfolding the whole abode, drags
his black and sluggish length around. Charon, the slovenly old
ferryman, plies his noiseless boat to and fro laden with shadowy
passengers. Far away in the centre grim Pluto sits on his ebony
throne and surveys the sad subjects of his dreadful domain. By his
side sits his stolen and shrinking bride, Proserpine, her
glimmering brows encircled with a wreath of poppies. Above the
subterranean monarch's head a sable rainbow spans the infernal
firmament; and when, with lifted hand, he announces his decrees,
the applause given by the twilight populace of Hades is a rustle
of sighs, a vapor of tears, and a shudder of submission.

The belief in this dolorous kingdom was early modified by the
reception of two other adjacent realms, one of reward, one of
torture; even as Goethe says, in allusion to the current Christian
doctrine, "Hell was originally but one apartment: limbo and
purgatory were afterwards added as wings." Passing through Hades,
and turning in one direction, the spirit traveller would arrive at
Elysium or Abraham's bosom:

"To paradise the gloomy passage winds Through regions drear and
dismal, and through pain, Emerging soon in beatific blaze Of
light.