upon the quagmire until they sank in the reeking depths.  “Who more deserving of hell than ye, who gossipped and imagined all manner of tales, who retailed lies from house to house so that ye might laugh, after setting the entire neighbourhood at war?  What more would one of us have done?” “This,” said the Angel, “is the abode of the slanderers, defamers and backbiters, and of all envious cowards who always do hurt in word or deed behind one’s back.”

From thence we went past an enormous lair, the vilest I had yet seen, and the fullest of vermin, of soot, and of stench.  “This,” said he, “is the place of those who hoped for heaven because they were harmless, in other words, because they were neither good nor bad.”  Next to this foul pit I saw a great multitude sitting down, whose groans were more fierce than anything I had heard hitherto in hell.  “Save us all!” cried I, “what makes these complain more than all others, seeing there be no pain, nor demon near them?” “Ah,” answered the Angel, “if the pain without is less, that which is within is more,—­here are stubborn heretics, the godless and unchristian, many of the worldy-wise, of apostates, of the persecutors of the church, and millions such as they, who have utterly been given over to the more bitterly painful punishment of the conscience, which now without let or ceasing has its full sway over them.  “I will not this time,” quoth conscience, “be drowned in beer, or blinded by rewards, or deafened by song and good company, or hushed or stupified by a thoughtless torpor; now I will be heard, and never shall the truth, the stinging truth, cease dinning in your ears.”  The will creates a desire for the lost paradise, the memory reproaches them with the ease wherewith it might have been gained, and the reason shews the greatness of the loss, and the certainty that nought awaits them but this unspeakable gnawing for ever and ever; so by these three means, conscience rends them more terribly than would all the devils in hell.

Coming out of that wondrous defile, I heard much talking, and for every word such wild horse-laughter as if some five hundred devils would shed their horns with laughing.  But after I had drawn near to behold the very rare sight of a smile in hell, what was it but two gentlemen, lately arrived, appealing for the respect due to their rank, and the merriment was intended only to give affront to them.  A pot-bellied squire stood there with an enormous roll of parchment, his genealogical chart, declaring from how many of the Fifteen Tribes of Gwynedd he had sprung, how many justices of the peace, and how many sheriffs there had been of his house.  “Ha ha,” cried one of the devils, “we know the merit of most of your forebears, were you like your father, or great-great-grandsire, we would not have deigned to touch you.  But thou, thou art but the heir of utter darkness, vile whelp, thou art hardly worth a night’s lodging; and yet thou shalt have some