Seem'd full of life even when their atmosphere
Of light gave way, and show'd them taking shapes
Unequal, of deep valleys and vast mountains;
And some emitting sparks, and some displaying
Enormous liquid plains, and some begirt

With luminous belts, and floating moons, which took,
Like them, the features of fair earth :—instead,
All here seems dark and dreadful.

Lucifer.

But distinct.

Thou seekest to behold death, and dead things?
Cain. I seek it not; but as I know there are
Such, and that my sire's sin makes him and me,
And all that we inherit, liable

To such, I would behold at once, what I

Must one day see perforce.

Lucifer.

Cain.

Behold!

'Tis darkness.

Lucifer. And so it shall be ever; but we will

Lucifer. Return! be sure: how else should death

be peopled?

Its present realm is thin to what it will be,

Through thee and thine.

Cain.

The clouds still open

wide

And wider, and make widening circles round us.

Lucifer.

Fear not-without me thou

Couldst not have gone beyond thy world. On! on!

[They disappear through the clouds.

SCENE II.

Hades.(1)

Enter LUCIFER and CAIN.

Cain. How silent and how vast are these dim worlds!

For they seem more than one, and yet more peopled Than the huge brilliant luminous orbs which swung So thickly in the upper air, that I

Had deem'd them rather the bright populace

Of some all unimaginable Heaven,

Than things to be inhabited themselves,
But that on drawing near them I beheld
Their swelling into palpable immensity

(1) [It is not very easy to perceive what natural or rational object the Devil proposes to himself in carrying his disciple through the abyss of space, to show him that repository of which we remember hearing something in our infant days, 'where the old moons are hung up to dry.' To prove that there is a life beyond the grave, was surely no part of his business when he was engaged in fostering the indignation of one who repined at the necessity of dying. And, though it would seem, that entire Hades is, in Lord Byron's picture, a place of suffering, yet, when Lucifer himself had premised that these sufferings were the lot of those spirits who had sided with him against Jehovah, is it likely that a more accurate knowledge of them would increase Cain's eagerness for the alliance, or that he would not rather have enquired whether a better fortune did not await the adherents of the triumphant side? At all events, the spectacle of many ruined worlds was more likely to awe a mortal into submission, than to rouse him to hopeless resistance; and, even if it made him a hater of God, had no natural tendency to render him furious against a brother who was to be his fellow-sufferer. BISHOP HEBER.]

Of matter, which seem'd made for life to dwell on,
Rather than life itself. But here, all is

So shadowy and so full of twilight, that
It speaks of a day past.

Lucifer. Of death.

Cain.

It is the realm

Till I know

Wouldst have it present?

That which it really is, I cannot answer.
But if it be as I have heard my father
Deal out in his long homilies, 'tis a thing-
Oh God! I dare not think on't! Cursed be
He who invented life that leads to death!
Or the dull mass of life, that, being life,
Could not retain, but needs must forfeit it-
Even for the innocent!

Lucifer.

Dost thou curse thy father? Cain. Cursed he not me in giving me my birth? Cursed he not me before my birth, in daring To pluck the fruit forbidden?

Lucifer.

Thou say'st well:

The curse is mutual 'twixt thy sire and thee
But for thy sons and brother?

Cain.

Let them share it

With me, their sire and brother! What else is
Bequeath'd to me? I leave them my inheritance.
Oh, ye interminable gloomy realms

Of swimming shadows and enormous shapes,
Some fully shown, some indistinct, and all
Mighty and melancholy-what are ye?
Live ye, or have ye lived?

Lucifer.

Somewhat of both.

Cain. Then what is death?

Lucifer.

What? Hath not he who made ye

Said 'tis another life?

Cain.

Till now he hath

Said nothing, save that all shall die. (1)

(1) [Death, the last and most dreadful of all evils, is so far from being one, that it is the infallible cure for all others

"To die, is landing on some silent shore,

Where billows never beat, nor tempests roar :

Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er." — GARTH.

For, abstracted from the sickness and sufferings usually attending it, it is no more than the expiration of that term of life God was pleased to bestow on us, without any claim or merit on our part. But was it an evil ever so great, it could not be remedied but by one much greater, which is by living for ever; by which means our wickedness, unrestrained by the prospect of a future state, would grow so unsupportable, our sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our pleasures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the universe could be so completely miserable as a species of immortal men. We have no reason, therefore, to look upon death as an evil, or to fear it as a punishment, even without any supposition of a future life: but if we consider it as a passage to a more perfect state, or a remove only in an eternal succession of still improving states (for which we have the strongest reasons), it will then appear a new favour from the divine munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his resi dence at the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road. The instability of human life, or of the changes of its successive periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the necessary progress of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far from being evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession of seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and, like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour of the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chase: the serene autumn of complete manhood feasts us with the golden harvests of our worldly pursuits: nor is the hoary winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and relation of those past are perhaps none of the least; and at last death opens to us a new prospect,

Lucifer.

Perhaps

He one day will unfold that further secret.

Cain. Happy the day!

Lucifer.

Yes; happy! when unfolded,

Through agonies unspeakable, and clogg'd
With agonies eternal, to innumerable

Yet unborn myriads of unconscious atoms,

All to be animated for this only!

[see

Cain. What are these mighty phantoms which I Floating around me?

They wear not the form

Of the intelligences I have seen

Round our regretted and unenter'd Eden,

Nor wear the form of man as I have view'd it

In Adam's and in Abel's, and in mine,

Nor in

children's:

my sister-bride's, nor in my
And yet they have an aspect, which, though not
Of men nor angels, looks like something, which
If not the last, rose higher than the first,
Haughty, and high, and beautiful, and full
Of seeming strength, but of inexplicable
Shape; for I never saw such. They bear not
The wing of seraph, nor the face of man,
Nor form of mightiest brute, nor aught that is
Now breathing; mighty yet and beautiful
As the most beautiful and mighty which
Live, and yet so unlike them, that I scarce
Can call them living.

from whence we shall probably look back upon the diversions and occu pations of this world with the same contempt we do now on our tops and nobby-horses, and with the same surprise that they could ever so much entertain or engage us. —JENYNS.-"These," says Dr. Johnson," are sen timents which, though not new, may be read with pleasure and profit, in the thousandth repetition."]