'There is a place in a black and hollow vault,
Where day is never seen; there shines no sun,
But flaming horror of consuming fires;
A lightless sulphur, choked with smoky fogs
Of an infected darkness; in this place
Dwell many thousand thousand sundry sorts
Of never-dying deaths; there damned souls
Roar without pity; there are gluttons fed
On toads and adders; there is burning oil
Poured down the drunkard's throat; the usurer
Is forced to sup whole draughts of molten gold;
There is the murderer for ever stabbed,
Yet can he never die; there lies the wanton
On racks of burning steel, while in his soul
He feels the torment of his raging lust;
There stand those wretched things
Who have dreamed out whole years in lawless sheets
And secret incests, cursing one another.'
The extremity of vindictiveness defeats itself: excessive tyranny begets the spirit of revolt. Surely a God of infinite mercy would not suffer such horrors to continue for ever; and hence men, because they are told that they do continue for ever, become deists and atheists, and will not believe in the existence of things which are altogether beyond their comprehension.
If the introduction of a character like Bellagranda into my otherwise unsullied romance requires any apology, I am quite willing to make it. She, like a great many more of a similar stamp, has found her way into multitudes of stories and histories; and I do not see why she should be rigidly excluded from mine. We can hardly take up a newspaper without finding, either in the Divorce Court or out of it, something about her and her wayward and wanton proceedings. I have taken care, however, not to exhibit her in an offensive or revolting manner, as was often done shamelessly by authors of the old school, when Fielding and Smollet favoured the world with their choice productions. She is, perhaps, as a personification of a very large class—her homicidal and other outrageous tendencies of course always excepted—the most powerful and irresistible instrument of
