and the visions of purgatory would have great value in the age when our judicial records are imperfect; because, by the proportioned scale of punishments in each, they would help to show the classes of crimes most prevalent at different periods.

"The following pages have also their importance in an historical point of view. They show how, during the middle ages, the Christian religion was gradually corrupted by adventitious and superstitious legends. Nothing was ever more true than the stigma of idolatry applied by the earlier reformers to the religion of papal Rome. The Roman Catholic system was (and continues to be) a mixture of Christianity with Paganism, in which too generally the pure religion of the gospel is stifled under the weighty superstructure. Superstitions, such as those described in the present essay, were at first tolerated among a newly converted and ignorant people; but they were subsequently approved and encouraged by a political priesthood, as a powerful instrument of domination and oppression, till they were finally accepted as an integral part of the doctrines of the Church."

This book deals chiefly with the Irish superstition regarding purgatory, and resolves their notions of its situation into the original mythology of the people.

"The formation of the story of purgatory itself seems to have been gradual—it was a work of the imagination--and every artist who copied the picture added some fresh touches of his own. This we can easily understand, when we but consider the extreme love of metaphor which could make the writers of the middle ages talk of 'the transparent eye-balls of virgin bashfulness,' or 'the purple flowers of modesty,' or the plentiful plantations of apple-trees fertilising the mind with flourishing leaf!' Let us but imagine such phrases as 'the dragon of gluttony,' or 'the shrubbery of pride,' to be taken literally, and we have at once created no small part of purgatory. These phrases will all be found in the writings of Adhelm. The English writers seem to have exceeded those of any other country in their partiality for such metaphors, and it is remarkable that nearly all the purgatory legends which exist are English or Irish.

"The fables of western paganism furnished sufficient materials for the foundation of these legends. We have there a place of punishment (hell), of which even the name was adopted by the Christian missionaries, and a place of happiness after this life. The former was a gloomy comfortless region, like the shades of the ancientsperhaps if we were better acquainted with the details of the Teutonic mythology, we should find there some of the torments of the hell of later times. At the end of the Sæmundar Edda of the Northerns, we find a legend on this subject, entitled the 'Solar-liodh,' which presents an early mixture of the Christian and pagan doctrines of the west. A father appears to his son in a dream, and describes to him the state of the souls after death: he informs him, that after quitting the body, he first passed through the seven zones of the lower world; that he then came to the mouth of the abyss, where he saw multitudes of blackbirds as thick as clouds of flies-these were souls. He then describes the different punishments of various classes of sinners: impure women were seen dragging sorrowfully heavy stones; wicked men covered with wounds were walking along paths of red-hot sand; envious men had runes of blood imprinted on their breasts; those who had sought wordly pleasures were condemned to pass their time in painful pursuits which had no object; robbers, bending under burdens of lead, marched towards the castle of Satan; venomous reptiles gnawed the hearts of assassins; the ravens of Tartarus tore out the eyes of liars. The vision closes with a prospect of the splendour of paradise. The primitive form of the legend is here probably smothered under the details of a comparatively late period. "The earlier visions of purgatory and paradise are distinguished from those which followed by the simplicity of their details. The first, of which we have any knowledge, is that of Furseus, which is alluded to by Bede, and must have been extremely popular amongst our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. There still exist manuscript copies of the same history which Bede saw, and which appear to have been written soon after the date of the vision. In the tenth century it was translated into Anglo-Saxon, in the form of an homily, by Archbishop Alfric, the most celebrated literary man of his time; and we have a manuscript of it which, there are reasons to think, is in his own hand-writing. Alfric introduces the subject by an allusion to a similar vision, said to

VOL. I.

have been granted to St. Paul; but he, as well as the other earlier writers who allude to this latter vision, pretend to no further knowledge of it than what may be gathered from the apostle's own words, who mentions a person that had been carried up in the spirit to the third heaven. Among the manuscripts of Trinity College library, however, there is a short relation, entitled 'Visio sancti Pauli Apostoli de pœnis purgatorii;' it was perhaps a work of the twelfth century, when such legends were most fashionable. At the entrance of purgatory St. Paul saw growing fiery trees, on which people were hanging by their different members, or by their tongues, eyes, or hair, according to the crimes they had committed on earth. Within was a great furnace, with a dreadful fire, and beyond it a fiery lake. After having witnessed the operations of purgatory, he was taken to paradise to see the condition of the saints.” "Ireland," says Mr. Wright, "once looked upon the English Church as the mother and protector of her own. In 1073, the fourth year after Lanfranc was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury, Patrick came to London to be ordained Bishop of Dublin, and took back with him from the archbishop, letters to the kings of Ireland, whose contents were 'very worthy to be held in memory.' A few years after this Lanfranc sent to the Irish Bishop Donald, letters filled with the fatness of holy doctrine;' and about 1085 he consecrated to the bishopric of Dublin the monk Donatus, at the desire of the king, the clergy, and the people of Ireland, who also carried back with him letters of exhortation. At the date 1121, the monk, who wrote the continuation of the 'Chronicle of Florence of Worcester,' says This year a certain Irishman named Gregory, elected by the king, the clergy, and the people of Ireland to the bishopric of Dublin, came, according to the custom of ancient standing, to be ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the primate of England.' By the precept of the archbishop, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, at his castle of Devizes, raised him to the grade of deacon and presbyter in the August of that year, and he was consecrated bishop shortly after by Ralf, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth. Before his return to Ireland he assisted at the consecration of the Church of Tewkesbury."

"Before the time of the Norman Conquest purgatorial legends were common as well in England as in the neighbouring parts of Europe, in the fact, that at the beginning of the eleventh century they had become an object of ridicule. In a manuscript volume, preserved in the public library of the University of Cambridge, which bears internal evidence of having been written by an English monk in Germany about the middle of that century, among several Latin rhyming songs, there is one which tells the story of a prophet' who had lately visited the infernal regions. Among other circumstances of their geography, he described them as surrounded on every side by thick woods. He had afterwards been to heaven, and there he saw Christ sitting and eating: Peter, he said, was head cook, and John the Baptist was butler, and served round the wine to the saints in a glorious cup. On being pressed for an account of the repast which he himself had made there, our 'prophet confessed that in a corner of the kitchen he had stolen from the cooks a piece of liver, and after devouring it had slunk away. The delinquent was punished in this world for his offence in the other; for Heriger, the prefect of Mentz, ordered him to be publicly flogged, advising him at the same time that when Christ invited him to dinner, it would be well for him if he would in future keep from stealing.'

"The doctrine of purgatory appears to be the oldest of those which distinguish the Romish from the Protestant Churches. It is now generally known that the AngloSaxon Church did not hold many of what are called the Romish doctrines, but, on the contrary, that towards the tenth and eleventh centuries its orthodox teachers opposed them as growing heresies. Purgato. y, however, may be traced a long way back in the Anglo-Saxon divines. In Bede's time (the eighth century) it seems to have been a matter of speculation whether there existed such an expiatory place or not, but the two visions which the historian has recorded, perhaps went further than any reasoning to dispel the doubts which might exist. The Anglo-Saxon notions of purgatory, indeed, have generally these visions for their model. The earliest and most popular doctrine was that which was pointed out by Furseus, that in the end of the world the earth would be occupied by a great purgatorial fire, which would cleanse it from all sin, and leave it renovated and purified. This was the doctrine taught by

Alfric. In one of his homilies he says, ' God's day will show them, for then he is manifested in fire, and the fire will prove what is the work of each of them. And he whose edifice lasteth through and withstandeth the fire, then receiveth the workman from God reward of his work: if any one's work burns, he hath the harm of it, and so is still held through the fire.' But the vision of Drihthelm shows that already the more enlarged notion of a purgatory immediately after death was getting ground, and that the belief in the power of helping people through it by masses and the alms of their friends was beginning to be established. In Bede, the angel is made to say to Drihthelm, 'The great burning vale which you saw is the place in which are punished the souls of those who, neglecting to confess and amend their sins till their last day, have been penitent at the moment of death. All, however, who have confessed and repented, even in death, will come to heaven at the day of doom. Many, however, are helped by the prayers of the living, and by alms and fasts, and, above all, by the celebration of the mass, so that they are delivered before doomsday.' In a homily preserved in the Bodleian library at Oxford, (quoted in Soames's Bampton Lectures,) which is probably not much older than the beginning of the eleventh century, this doctrine is still more fully developed. 'Some men's souls,' it

says, 'go to rest after their departure, and those of some go to punishments, according to that which they wrought before, and are afterwards released through almsdeeds, and especially through the mass, if men do these for them: and some are condemned with the devil to hell. They come never thence; and he who once cometh to rest will never come to punishments. The soul hath truly, even as books tell us, the likeness of the body in all its limbs, and it feels softness or soreness wherever it is, according to that which it earned before. Light crimes and little sins are then purged through the penal fire: and there is a punishmeut of no kind in this world so severe as that aforesaid fire which purgeth the negligent. Some are there long, some a little while, according to what their friends do for them here in life, and according to what they earned before in life. Each knows another, and those who come to rest know truly both those whom they knew before and those whom they knew not, because they were in good deeds before alike.'

"Many of the popular ideas which were held by our Saxon forefathers concerning the actual situation and appearance of purgatory, and more especially of paradise, are not easily to be accounted for, unless we suppose them derived from some of the sectarians of the eastern church. A manuscript in the British Museum furnishes the following information respecting the latter place: Paradise is neither in heaven nor on earth. The book says that Noah's flood was forty fathoms high, over the highest hills that are on earth; and paradise is forty fathoms higher than Noah's flood was, and it hangeth between heaven and earth wonderfully, as the Ruler of all things made it. and it is perfectly level both in length and breadth. There is neither hollow nor hill; nor is there frost or snow, hail or rain; but there is fons vitæ, that is, the well of life. When the calends of January commence, then floweth the well so beautifully and so gently, and no deeper than man may wet his finger on the front, over all that land. And so likewise each month once when the month comes in, the well begins to flow. And there is the copse of wood, which is called Radion Saltus, where each tree is as straight as an arrow, and so high that no earthly man ever saw so high, or can say of what kind they are. And there never falleth leaf off, for they are evergreen, beautiful and pleasant, full of happiness. Paradise is upright on the eastern part of this world. There is neither heat nor hunger, nor is there ever night, but always day. The sun there shineth seven times brighter than on this earth. Therein dwell innumerable angels of God, with the holy souls, till doomsday: therein dwelleth a beautiful bird called Phoenix; he is large and grand, as the mighty one formed him; he is the lord over all birds.' And so the writer runs on in praise of the phoenix.

"The Anglo-Saxons appear to have been attached to these strange tales. In the dialogue between Saturn and Solomon, which is printed in Mr. Thorpe's 'Analecta Anglo-Saxonica,' one question, and its answer, are, 'Tell me why is the sun so red in the evening?-Because she looketh down upon hell.' In a similar dialogue between Adrian and Ritheus, the same question occurs, and is similarly answered; and we

have also another question: 'Tell me where shineth the sun at night ?—The answer is- I tell thee, in three places: first, in the belly of the whale, which is called Leviathan; and secondly, she shineth on hell: and the third time she shineth on that island which is called Glith, and there resteth the souls of holy men till dooms. day.' Where such tales originated, it is impossible to say till we know more of them. Some may have come from the eastern Christians-others probably originated in a mixture of the pre-existing myths of the Saxons with Christianity-and not a few from a too literal interpretation of scripture language. Of the latter class, we have a remarkable instance in the belief which prevailed during the middle ages, that there was actually a sea above the sky, which was founded on the mention made in Genesis of the separation of the waters above the firmament from those below. This belief is curiously illustrated by two legendary stories preserved by Gervase of Tilbury, One Sunday, he says, the people of a village in England were coming out of church on a thick cloudy day, when they saw the anchor of a ship hooked to one of the tomb-stones; the cable, which was tightly stretched, hanging down from the air. The people were astonished, and while they were consulting about it, suddenly they saw the rope move as though some one laboured to pull up the anchor. The anchor, however, still held fast by the stone, and a great noise was suddenly heard in the air, like the shouting of sailors. Presently a sailor was seen sliding down the cable for the purpose of unfixing the anchor; and when he had just loosened it, the villagers seized hold of him, and while in their hands he quickly died, just as though he had been drowned. About an hour after, the sailors above, hearing no more of their comrade, cut the cable and sailed away. In memory of this extraordinary event, says my author, the people of the village made the hinges of the church-door out of the iron of the anchor, and there they are still to be seen.' At another time, a merchant of Bristol set sail with his cargo for Ireland. Some time after this, while his family were at supper, a knife suddenly fell in through the window on the table. When the husband returned he saw the knife, declared it to be his own, and said that on such a day, at such an hour, while sailing in an unknown part of the sea, he dropped the knife overboard, and the day and hour were known to be exactly the time when it fell through the window. These accidents, Gervase thinks, are a clear proof of there being a sea above hanging over us.

This superstitution was not confined to our islands. St. Agobard wrote against it in the ninth century. He tells us that the people of his time believed that there was a region named Magonia, whence ships navigated above the clouds, in which the fruits of our earth that were apparently destroyed and beaten down by tempests were carried, being sold to the sailors above by the exciters of the tempest. He adds, that he himself saw four persons, three men and a woman, in the hands of the populace, who were proceeding to stone them, because they believed them to have fallen overboard from one of the ships in the upper waters; but, after much reasoning, the ignorant and superstitious people were confounded by the truth, as the thief is confounded when he is taken.'

The twelfth century was also famous for purgatory visions-and these are full of wild flights of imagination, most of the incidents being, however, of classic origin. Mr. Wright details one which was evidently adapted from the story of Medea. Allusions are frequent to Vulcan and his Cyclops, and to Acheron and Lethe. It is even supposed that Henry of Sultrey was indebted for the scene of his legend of Owain to the "Necyomantia" of Virgil, or to that of the Cave of Trophonius in Greece. Of this legend there have been subsequent French and English metrical versions. Mr. Wright gives an abstract of the English poem of "Owayn Miles," from the Cottonian MS. The peculiarity of this vision lies not in the circumstances, but in the place the situation of purgatory, which it reveals.

"The situation of purgatory was not restricted to one place. Gervase tells us a story of a maiden to whom the soul of her lover appeared after death, who told her that he was in purgatory, but that he had permission sometimes to visit her. He said, among many other things, that there was a purgatory-place in the air; and also at a greater distance from the earth, a place where the souls of the good waited the day of doom. This, too, was a notion founded upon popular belief; for one class

of the elves of the peasantry had their dwelling-place in the air. When people began to philosophise upon the beings of the popular mythology, they created many hypotheses to account for their origin; one of which was, that they were a part of the rebellious angels who were expelled from heaven with Lucifer. In the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of Saturn and Solomon,' the answer to the question, Whither went these angels?' is, 'They were divided into three parts: one part God placed in the vortex of the air, another part in the vortex of the water, and a third part in the abyss of hell. The monks taught that these spirits were much more terrible before the coming of Christ, at which time they were reduced to a state of comparative harmlessness, and were compelled to retire into wildernesses and into the water and air. A curious story illustrative of this circumstance is told by Giraldus. There was in Denmark an archbishop, and he had a clerk,' a stranger, who by his diligence and discreet behaviour, but more particularly by his great knowledge of literature and history, soon became a favourite. One day, while he was relating to the archbishop many ancient and before unknown histories, mention happened to be made of the time of the incarnation of Christ, when he said, Before Christ came on earth the demons had great power over men, but at his advent that power was very much diminished, so that they all fled from before his face and disappeared: for some threw themselves into the sea; others concealed themselves in the hollows of trees and in the clefts of rocks; and I myself jumped into a certain fountain.' As soon as he had said this he blushed as if he were ashamed, and left the company. The archbishop and his people were very much astonished, and almost immediately sent to seek after him, but he was nowhere to be found. Not long after this, two of the archbishop's clergy returned from Rome: when they heard what had happened during their absence, they enquired the day and hour of his disappearance, and declared that on exactly the same day and hour they met him on the Alps, and that he told them he was going to Rome, about the business of his master the archbishop. Whence it appeared clearly that he was a hob-goblin in clerical disguise.

"Saint Brandan, in his wonderful voyage, found hell in the north." Paradise is said to be in the east.

"At the beginning of a MS. volume in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a map of the world, according to the ideas of our forefathers of the twelfth century. In the extreme east the Ganges empties itself into the ocean, about the place where our modern map-makers are accustomed to place the most northerly of the Japanese islands, and opposite the mouth of the Ganges appears the island of 'Paradisus.' Near it, a little to the north, is Tilos insula,' and a long way to the south-west appears Taprobana or Ceylon. In this volume is contained an early copy of the Imago Mundi,' a Latin treatise on the cosmography of the time, written at the beginning of the twelfth century, in which paradise is said to be the extreme region of Asia, towards the east, and to be rendered inaccessible by a wall of fire which surrounded it, and which reached to heaven. The writer of this treatise describes the infernal regions as being within the earth, and tells us some particulars of their geography, presenting a strange mixture of classical and biblical names: here we have Lacus vel terra mortis;' there, Terra oblivionis;' in other parts, Tartarus, Gehenna, Erebus, Baratrum, Acheronta, Styx, Flegeton.

"However, the most common and most generally authorised position of purgatory and of hell was within the earth. It is thus described in the French Image du Monde,' written by Gautier de Metz, in 1245: I do not deny,' he says, that there may be a hell in other places besides this; for he who has merited it will have pain and evil after his death, wherever he may be :'

"Jou ne di pas qu'infers ne soit

Ailours, en quel liu qu ce soit;
Car après la mort partout a
Paine et mal qui deservi l'a.'

"But now,' he continues, listen to me, if you have the patience, how hell is situated in the middle of the earth, and of what nature it is, and what are its punishments :' "Or m'oiés, et si ne vous griet,

Comment infers en miliu siet