49 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon the miry earth (vi, 10-12) — a truly dismal abode. Further 

 on a group of the damned are confined in tombs made as hot by 

 flames as iron need be for any art. Whenever a soul is cast into 

 another circle it sprouts like a seed, and grows into a tree. The 

 Harpies then cause it pain by feeding upon its leaves (xiii, 99-102). 

 Soon a drove of sinners was met, followed by " horned demons, 

 with great scourges, who cruelly were beating them behind" 

 (xviii, 35, 36). In one place were a lot of holes in the rocky floor, 

 in each of which a transgressor was stuck head downward, and 

 as far as the calf, while the soles of his feet were frying with a 

 greasy flame (xix, 13-30). In another place was a lake of boiling 

 pitch in which souls were immersed, while demons stood round 

 and kept them under the surface with gaffs (xxi, 16-57). Another 

 group of lost ones had their hands bound with serpents, which 

 were also biting and stinging their bodies (xxiv, 94-96). Others 

 were driven round a ring, where each time they passed a devil 

 would cut them open so that their bowels hung out, and the 

 wound would close again while they were making the next 

 circuit (xxviii, 22-42). In one of the inner circles, if from the 

 hospitals, " all the diseases in one moat were gathered, such was 

 it here, and such a stench came from it, as from putrescent limbs 

 is wont to issue" (xxix, 49-51). Its denizens were scratching 

 scabs from their sores as a knife takes the scales off a fish. 



The punishments increase in severity with the descent to the 

 inner and smaller circles of the vast amphitheatre. In the ninth 

 and last circle, where traitors are punished, there is an ice-bound 

 lake, into which the perfidious ones are frozen. " The emperor of 

 the kingdom dolorous from his mid-breast forth issued from the 

 ice." He is supergigantic in size, and has three faces on his head. 

 In each mouth he crunches a sinner, but " To him in front the 

 biting was as naught unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine 

 utterly stripped of all the skin remained " (xxxiv, 55-60). The 

 three arch-traitors distinguished by these supreme torments were 

 Brutus, Cassius, and, the one in front, Judas. 



The reformers made little change in the mediseval concep- 

 tion of hell. Calvin Writes: "Forever harassed by a dreadful 

 tempest, they shall feel themselves torn asunder by an angry 

 God and transfixed and penetrated by mortal stings, terrified by 

 the thunderbolts of God, and broken by the weight of his hand, 

 so that to sink into any gulfs would be more tolerable than to 

 stand for a moment in these terrors." 



The characteristic austerity of the Puritans finds free scope in 

 the depiction of hell's torments. Their great poet Milton de- 

 scribes the place in the first and second books of Paradise Lost. 

 Satan and his host are cast into it " there to dwell in adamantine 

 chains and penal fire." 



