e which has generally prevailed in Christendom. Locating
the scene in the hollow of the earth, thus has it been described
by Milton,

"A dungeon horrible on all sides round As one great furnace
flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness
visible, Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of
anguish, doleful shades, where peace Nor hope can come, but
torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever
burning sulphur unconsumed;" wherein, confined by adamantine
walls, the fallen angels and all the damned welter overwhelmed
with floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire. Shapes once
celestially fair and proud, but now scarred from battle and
darkened by sin into faded forms of haggard splendor, support
their uneasy steps over the burning marl. Everywhere shrieks and
moans resound, and the dusky vault of pandemonium is lighted by a
blue glare cast pale and dreadful from the tossings of the flaming
lake. This was hell, where the wicked must shrink and howl
forever. Etna, Vesuvius, Stromboli, Hecla, were believed to be
vent holes from this bottomless and living pit of fire. The famous
traveller, Sir John Maundeville, asserted that he found a descent
into hell "in a perilous vale" in the dominions of Prester John.
Many a cavern in England still bears the name of "Hell hole." In a
dialogue between a clerk and a master, preserved in an old Saxon
catechism, the following question and reply occur: "Why is the sun
so red when she sets?" "Because she looks down upon hell."
Antonius Rusca, a learned professor at Milan, in the year 1621,
published a huge quarto in five books, giving a detailed
topographical account of the interior of the earth, hell,
purgatory, and limbo.14 There is a lake in the south of Ireland in
which is an island containing a cavern said to open down into
hell. This cave

13 Descriptions of the sufferings of hell, according to the
popular notions at different periods, are given in the work
published at Weimar in 1817, Das Rad der ewigen Hollenqual. In den
Curiositaten der physisch literarisch artistisch historischen Vor
und Mitwelt, band vi. st. 2.

14 De Inferno et Statn Damonum ante Mundi Exitium.

is called St. Patrick's Purgatory, and the pretence obtained quite
general credit for upwards of five centuries. Crowds of pilgrims
visited the place. Some who had the hardihood to venture in were
severely pinched, beaten, and burned, by the priests within,
disguised as d