And full of wrath bent on his enemies.
He on his impious foes right onward drove.

Among them he arriv'd; in his right hand
Grasping ten thousand thunders, which he sent
Before him, such as in their souls infix'd
Plagues; they, astonish'd, all resistance lost,
All courage.

They were driven down from the verge of heaven, and eternal wrath burned after them to the bottomless pit. Nine days they were falling, till at length hell received and closed upon them. O what a fit habitation for rebellious spirits,-fraught with unquenchable fire, the house of woe and pain! Emily. I always thought hell was made on purpose for wicked men and women.

Mamma. We read in the Holy Scriptures, that it was "prepared for the devil and his angels." They must have fallen from a state of blessedness before Satan tempted Eve.

Eliza.-I think it is very unlikely that the good and mighty spirits who fought at the command of God should be unable in two days to overcome his enemies. I expected He would give them the victory immediately.

Mamma. They were left to themselves during that time, the Almighty ordaining that Messiah should have the glory of ending the war.

Nine days and nights the vanquished lay rolling in the fiery gulf, confounded, though immortal. Satan was the first who awoke to a consciousness of his utter misery; and he tormented himself with the thought of lost happiness and everlasting pain. When he cast his baleful eyes around to view the dismal situation waste and wild, he saw on all sides a horrible dungeon flaming like one great furnace. Yet these flames gave no light; they only rendered darkness visible, and discovered sights of woe, regions of sorrow, and doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell, and hope is not even a transient visiter: But there is torture without end,- -a fiery deluge fed with ever-burning sulphur. O how unlike the place from whence they fell! Instead of repentance and humiliation under such misery, their affliction and dismay were mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate.

Among the companions of his fall, who were overwhelmed with floods and whirl winds of tempestuous fire, Satan soon dis

cerned weltering by his side one next himself in power and in crime, who was long afterwards known in Palestine by the name of Beelzebub.

I will not repeat the dialogue between these wicked chiefs, who were full of revenge and hatred against God. At length they arose from the fiery flood, and with expanded wings steered their flight to dry land,

If it were land that ever burn'd

With solid, as the lake with liquid fire.

Satan stood on the beach of the inflamed sea, and called his legions. Under amazement at their hideous change, they lay abject and lost, covering the flood. Though so fearfully altered, he called them princes, potentates, warriors, the flower of heaven. At their General's command they quitted the burning flood:

Numberless were those bad angels seen,
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell,
"Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.

The poet gives to the leaders who hastened to their commander, the names of those idols or false gods that were afterwards worshipped by various nations:-Moloch, to whom children were sacrificed by their pa

rents; Chemos or Peor, Baal, Ashtaroth; Astarté, worshipped under the likeness of the moon; Thammuz, Dagon, Rimmon, Osiris, Isis, Orus, and Belial: These, with Beelzebub before-mentioned, were the chiefs. You, my dear Eliza, have met with most of these names in the course of your reading; and you all remember Dagon was the idol which fell before the ark of God in the land of the Philistines. In the story of Elijah, which I have told you so often, four hundred priests cried aloud, "O Baal, hear us!" And you cannot have forgotten that wicked men are frequently termed in the Old Testament "Sons of Belial."

Emily. And it was to the house of Rimmon that Naaman went with his master, the king of Syria.

Mamma.-All these, and more, came to Satan with downcast looks,

Yet such wherem appear'd

Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found their chief
Not in despair; to have found themselves not lost
In loss itself.

With high words that bore semblance of worth, not substance, he gently raised their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears.

The following is a fine portrait of this evil

being:

He above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood like a tower; his form had yet not lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd; and the excess
Of glory obscur❜d.

His face

Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride,
Waiting revenge: Cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn'd
For ever now to have their lot in pain.

In his first address to the assembled powers, Satan speaks of a report in heaven, that God designed to create a new world, and to place therein a generation whom his choice regard would favour equal to the angels:

Thither if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first irruption, thither or elsewhere:
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage.

Mammon, who was in after-times worshipped as the God of riches, with the assist