the inexorable god, and he prolongs or shortens the career of mortals according to the dictates of his supreme pleasure. In Hades, criminal causes continually crowd the somber tribunal of the rigid and unpitying dispensers of justice. To all wicked persons, the exit from the stage of time, is the certain prelude to final judgment from the impartial decision of Nona, Decima, and Morta-the three Fates, thus denominated because they control the past, the present, and the future, according to fate, which-as Cicero affirms, implies all that is to happen agreeably to the decrees of God. These dread divinities also respond to the significant appellation of Parcæ, either because they spare no person, or because they distribute good and bad gifts to man already at his birth. To their delicate fingers the fatal thread of life is officially and irrevocably confided. The three judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and acus, unmoved by misery, deaf to bribes, and disregardful of the distinctions of age, sex, or rank, pass sentence of condemnation on the guilty shades, while the three Furies see that it is carried into execution. These goddesses, charged with such important penal functions, are frightful beings; for though they have the fair visages of women, their looks and official insignia inspire the soul with sentiments of terror and dismay. They are generally represented with a grim aspect, bloody garments, and serpents coiling around their heads and the upper parts of their fiendish bodies. They hold a burning torch in one hand, and a whip of scorpions in the other, while dismay, rage, pallor, and death, compose their retinue and obey their behests. There is a place in the grim Plutonian empire, whichas Virgil informs us in the immortal Eneid, teems with many rare and charming natural advantages, and displays a scenery of almost preternatural loveliness: abounding everywhere in inexhaustible sources of the most varied and exquisite delights; and which is known as the Elysium or Elysii Campi, the abode or the fields of the blessed. It is natural to presume that all those who have once entered this ecstatic region, where the pleasures of the soul must be at once so refined and so innocent, and where happiness is apparently so complete, would always remain in it, but such—according to some authors, is not the case. In process of time, many of the happy spirits-still, it seems, susceptible of further development, must return upon the earth, and pass into new bodies; and that they may not mourn the loss of their blissful state, or recoil from the miseries which await them in this world of vicissitudes and cares, in consequence of the bitter recollections of a past life, they drink of the waters of Lethe, one of the dusky rivers of Hell. Such only of the Elysian inhabitants who are distinguished for their exalted virtues, are exempt from transmigration, and are at last admitted into the society of the gods, while their idola or simulacra, according to the fertile fancy of the poets, continue to reside in the Hadean regions. The abode and fate of disembodied spirits, forms an almost inexhaustible and never-tiring theme for interesting and useful contemplation. Every tribe too or nation of antiquity, has something peculiar and striking as well as homogeneous on this attractive and important branch. of human knowledge, and I am, therefore, tempted somewhat further to enlarge the limits and illustrate the nature of these Plutonian researches. The ancient Mexicans, as it appears from the statements of Kaiser, the eminent German author already noticed in these pages, taught the existence of numerous spiritabodes, into one of which the innocent shades of children were received; into another-the sun, the valiant and illustrious souls of heroes ascended; while the corrupt and hideous ghosts of the wicked were doomed to grovel and pine in subterranean caverns, Nine heavens served to circumscribe and elucidate their fanciful visions and ardent dreams of future bliss. On the other hand, the frigid Greenlanders are content to predicate the doctrine of but one future Eden, which they locate in the abyss of the ocean, and to which skillful fishermen alone may dare to aspire with the confident hope of success. The Poems of Ossian furnish new and racy ideas on this exuberant and instructive theme, and of course, inspire new zeal in the effort of its investigation. I shall however call attention only to the first volume of these epic effusions, from page 214-216, inclusively, as in this passage of the work is chiefly embodied the essence of the Ossian theory of the abode and state of the dead.— "A blast came from the mountain"-thus sweetly sings Caledonia's ancient bard, "on its wings was the spirit of Loda. He came to his place in his terrors, and shook his dusky spear. His eyes appeared like flames in his dark face; his voice was like distant thunder. Fingal advanced his spear in night, and raised his voice on high: Son of night, retire, call thy winds, and fly! Why dost thou come to my presence, with thy shadowy arms? Do I fear thy gloomy form, spirit of dismal Loda? Weak is thy shield of clouds; feeble is that meteor, thy sword! The blast rolls them together: and thou thyself art lost. Fly from my presence, son of night! Call thy winds and fly!" "Dost thou force me from my place? replied the hollow voice. The people bend before me, I turn the battle in the field of the brave. I look on the nations and they vanish my nostrils pour the blast of death. I come abroad on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm, above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant." "Dwell in thy pleasant fields," said the King; “let Comhal's son be forgot. Do my steps ascend, from my hills, into thy peaceful plains? Do I meet thee, with a spear, on thy cloud, spirit of dismal Loda? Why then dost thou frown on me? Why shake thine airy spear ? Thou frownest in vain: I never fled from the mighty in war. And shall the sons of the wind frighten the King of Morven ? No: he knows the weakness of their arms!" 66 Fly to thy land," replied the form: "receive the wind, and fly! The blasts are in the hollow of my hand; the course of the storm is mine. The King of Sora is my son, he bends at the stone of my power. His battle is around Carric-thura; and he will prevail! Fly to thy land, son of Comhal, or feel my flaming wrath !" "He lifted high his shadowy spear! He bent forward his dreadful height. Fingal, advancing, drew his sword; the blade of the dark-brown Luno.* The gleaming path lin. The famous sword of Fingal, made by Lun or Luno, a smith of Loch of steel winds through the gloomy ghost. The form fell shapeless into air, like a column of smoke, which the staff of the boy disturbs, as it rises from the half-extinguished furnace." "The spirit of Loda shrieked, as, rolled into himself, he rose on the wind. Inistore shook at the sound. The waves heard it on the deep. They stopped, in their course, with fear the friends of Fingal started, at once; and took their heavy spears. They missed the king; they rose in rage; all their arms resound!”* PARAGRAPH VI. The Origin of the Idea of a Sheol or Hades among the Ancient Hebrews. Professor Bauer, in his valuable “Hebraeischen Alterthuemer des Alten und Neuen Testaments," thus writes on the origin of the idea of a Sheol or Hades, among the *This aerial Sheol or Hades of the Celtic ghosts, contrasts strikingly with the subterrestrial, or rather, inter-terrestrial, spirit-abode of most other nations. While the ghosts of the former dwell in air; flit among the clouds; or move on the blast, those of the latter are content to occupy a more humble domicile, noted mainly for its ample area and vast profundity. Sheol is often represented as being of a depth, which seems to be equalling that of Tartarus itself, of which Homer-robed in English costume which well becomes him, gives the following spirited description, in the eighth book of the Iliad. He introduces Jupiter threatening any of the gods, who dared to assist either the Greeks or the Trojans in their heroic and obstinate struggles, that he should either come back wounded to heaven, "Or far, oh far from steep Olympus thrown, As deep beneath th' infernal center hurl'd, As from the center to th' ethereal world."-Pope. |