during the Tarter period!... In this connection, I am reminded of
a poem compiled in a convent--a translation from the Greek, of
course--called, 'The Travels of the Mother of God among the
Damned,' with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception
inferior nowise to that of Dante. The 'Mother of God' visits
hell, in company with the archangel Michael as her cicerone to
guide her through the legions of the 'damned.' She sees them all,
and is witness to their multifarious tortures. Among the many
other exceedingly remarkably varieties of torments--every
category of sinners having its own--there is one especially
worthy of notice, namely a class of the 'damned' sentenced to
gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire. Those
whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no longer can rise
to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade out
from the omniscient memory, says the poem--an expression, by the
way, of an extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely
analysed. The Virgin is terribly shocked, and falling down upon
her knees in tears before the throne of God, begs that all she
has seen in hell--all, all without exception, should have their
sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally
interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when
God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries,
'How can I forgive His executioners?' She then commands that all
the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate
themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and
implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and--forgive them
all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a
kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and
Trinity, a chorus of the 'damned' singing loud praises to God
from their 'bottomless pit,' thanking and telling Him: