Hell Gate

“ The earth beneath these falling groups of figures is rocky and burning, and seems as if convulsed by earthquakes. A great city, on fire, is seen in the distance. The armies (?) are fleeing upon the mountains. On the foreground Hell is opened, and many figures are descending into it down stone steps, and beside a gate beneath a rock, where Sin and Death are to be closed eternally by that fiend who carries the key in one hand, and drags them down with the other. On the rock, and above the gate, a fiend with wings urges the wicked onward with fiery darts. ”

“ Then a new and unknown Legion of devils rushing out of the Pit surrounded him, and asked what he did there? 'Our Companions (say they) told thee this was the Gate of Hell; but they told thee a lye, and thou shalt know it is so; for we are always accustomed to tell lyes, that we may deceive those we cannot by telling the Truth. This is not the Hell, but now we will bring thee to it.' And having so said, they dragged the Soldier along to a great and spacious River, that was cover'd all over with a stinking sulphurous Flame, and filled up with Devils and damned Souls. ”

“ The gates of hell are the powers and policies of the devil's kingdom, the dragon's head and horns, by which he makes war with the Lamb; all that comes out of hell-gates, as being hatched and contrived there. These fight against the church by opposing gospel truths, corrupting gospel ordinances, persecuting good ministers and good Christians; drawing or driving, persuading by craft or forcing by cruelty, to that which is inconsistent with the purity of religion ”

“ When that has happened p. 94one of ourselves will come and close the gate of the whole region of horror upon the devils and the damned, which gate shall never, to all eternity, be opened for them. In the meantime, however, permission is given to the devils to come to these cooler regions, in order to torment the lost souls. Yea, they often obtain permission to go even into the air, and about the earth, to tempt men to the destructive paths, which lead to this dismal prison, from which there is no escape. ”

“ Well then, go you into hell?
Beat. No; but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say, 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' So deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter: for the heavens, he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. ”

“ The gates and doors of the hells also are visible only to those who are about to enter, to whom they are then opened. When these are opened gloomy and seemingly sooty caverns are seen tending obliquely downwards to the abyss, where again there are many doors. Through these caverns nauseous and fetid stenches exhale, which good spirits flee from because they abominate them, but evil spirits seek for them because they delight in them. ”

“ All men who've been through trench work, air work, life-and-death work on various fronts. Men of independent means. Men to whom office work and club life and all this petty stuff, here, is like dish-water after champagne! Dare-devils, all of them, that wouldn't stop at the gates of Hell!"
"The gates of Hell?" demanded Bohannan, his brow wrinkling with glad astonishment. ”

“ Terrified at this onslaught, the devils escape by the dormer-window, and sliding down the rope of palm-leaves take themselves off. As all the doors and windows, except the one in the roof, are shut, the devils cannot get into the house again. In the case of an epidemic, the proceedings are similar. All the gates of the village, except one, are closed; every voice is raised, every gong and drum beaten, every sword brandished. Thus the devils are driven out and the last gate is shut behind them. For eight days thereafter the village is in a state of siege, no one being allowed to enter it. ”

“ The dim light and the falling snow combined to transform the brave defenders into so many ghost-like shapes. One such weird figure could be descried, leaning silent and motionless against the parapet at the top of the tower, his heavy double arquebuse by his side. No part of the man stirred save the restless eyes, and they wandered incessantly to and fro, striving to make out the movements of the enemy. The miners, busy constructing a new moat just within the battered Peter Gate, looked, as they glided about, more like mountain-gnomes than human beings. ”

“ The abodes of the dead are approached through seven successive gates, guarded by monsters, and at each sits a porter who strips the souls that enter of some part of their raiment, until, after passing the last gate, they enter the world of shades as naked as when they came into the world they have just left. ”

“ Finally, I beheld him approach to the centre of the great abyss, that is to say, to Hell itself; and the expression of his countenance was most severe.
The exterior of Hell was appalling and frightful; it was an immense, heavy-looking building, and the granite of which it was formed, although black, was of metallic brightness; and the dark and ponderous doors were secured with such terrible bolts that no one could behold them without trembling. Deep groans and cries of despair might be plainly distinguished even while the doors were tightly closed ”

“ The fourth hell is beautiful to look upon. Its floor is covered with the sacred lotus, but hidden amongst its rosy petals are sharp-pointed iron spikes. And as the damned come to the edges of hell, they are seized by the powerful arms of diabolical monsters, who fling them with Titanic force upon the treacherous flowers below. They are flung times without number, their wailing and moaning echoing and re-echoing through the corridors of hell for a space of four thousand years whose every day is equal to seventy-six million years upon earth. ”

“ In the cathedrals, too, we still see this idea fossilized. Devils and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches, flame in windows. Above the great main entrance, the most common of all representations still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains, into the flaming mouth of hell. ”

“ It seemed they would never cease pouring forth from the narrow tunnel, a struggling, gesticulating stream. Behind them lightning played in jagged streaks across the little patch of sky, and the black smoke of the torches curled upward to the roof. Their appearance was not human, but that of demons incarnate; some ran upon all fours like wolves, gnashing their teeth and howling; many yelped in fiendish chorus; others brandished weapons aloft in the yellow flame, or lay, writhing like glistening snakes on the rock floor. It was a pandemonium, a babel, an unspeakable hell. ”

“ Some hells present an appearance like the ruins of houses and cities after conflagrations, in which infernal spirits dwell and hide themselves. In the milder hells there is an appearance of rude huts, in some cases contiguous in the form of a city with lanes and streets, and within the houses are infernal spirits engaged in unceasing quarrels, enmities, fightings, and brutalities; while in the streets and lanes robberies and depredations are committed. In some of the hells there are nothing but brothels, disgusting to the sight and filled with every kind of filth and excrement. ”

“ Through an almost interminable cavern the explorer now comes out into a vast mountainous region called the "Devil's Hunting Ground."
Corrupt men in public office, who combined and threw the blame of their guilt on one man are found in this region transformed into wild animals, for the amusement of Satan's sharp-shooting devils. ”

“ The scorching sun on earth at any rate gave them daylight, but the flames of hell shed no light, that the terrors might never cease of those whom the devil’s myrmidons drove over the narrow bridge leading to his horrible realm, goading them with spears and pitchforks, with heavy cudgelling or gnawing of their flesh. In the anguish of death, and the crush by the way, mothers trod down their infants and fathers their daughters ”

“ At every one of the gates of the city the mob halt and command their victim to climb up the ladder and peer over the walls to see if the kings are anywhere in sight.
Sometimes when he reaches the top the poor wretch is allowed to fall, at the risk of a cracked head or a broken limb. If he escapes all dangers, he is led on from gate to gate until his patience or his faith is exhausted. ”

“ Many figures, chained and bound together, and in various attitudes of despair and horror, fall through the air, and some are scourged by Spirits with flames of fire into the abyss of Hell which opens beneath, on the left hand of the Harlot's seat; where others are howling and descending into the flames, and in the act of dragging each other into Hell, and of contending and fighting with each other on the brink of perdition. ”

“ Below the lowest hell wherein, in sunless crime and vice, their ruined natures were immerged, lay, as in the Inferno of Dante, a hell still lower—the hell decreed by avarice for innocent men, new-risen from which, all loathly foul, all awful with long suffering, stood the dark fugitive, afraid to tell his name, afraid to say from whence he had come, afraid to stand in the presence of his fellow, as though he were some frightful felon dreading the vengeance of mankind! ”

“ Oh ye! who have thought the way to hell was bleak and frozen as Norway, parched and barren as Sahara, strewed like Golgotha with bones and skulls reeking with stench like the vale of Gehenna,—witness your mistake! The way to hell is gorgeous! It is a highway, cast up; no lion is there, no ominous bird to hoot a warning, no echoings of the wailing-pit, no lurid gleams of distant fires, or moaning sounds of hidden woe! Paradise is imitated to build you a way to death; the flowers of heaven are stolen and poisoned ”

“ And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud, And after waiting some few days For a new livery—dirty yellow Turned up with black—the wretched fellow 145 Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
PART 3. HELL. 1. Hell is a city much like London— A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; 150 Small justice shown, and still less pity. 2. There is a Castles, and a Canning, A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh; All sorts of caitiff corpses planning All sorts of cozening for trepanning 155 Corpses less corrupt than they. ”

“ Through the flickering red light that pervades this region the explorer makes his way to the next district.
THE BUCKET-SHOP GAMBLERS.
CANTO XLII.
In what is called the Carousal of Hell, Mr. Hunt sees the long-legged devils.
Some of these have legs thirty feet long. They hop about, chasing victims, in a game of tag. The feature of the game that makes it interesting for the devils is that they are never "it."
People who "jump at conclusions" are some of the unfortunates who are kept dodging and guessing in this department. ”

“ Women and men crawled near the caldrons, and down the ladders into the hell pits went the children—up with the heavy loads past the torch and lash of the devil servers, whose duty it was to see that no panting being loitered. ”

“ After recovering from the gulp, he looked ruefully at the empty shell and blurted out—the devil go with you down!
Many people think—and say it too—that it is an article of belief with Catholics that all Protestants when they die go straight to hell—which is a libel. Yet it is often kept up in joke, as in this and other stories:—The train was skelping away like mad along the main line to hell—for they have railways there now—till at last it pulled up at the junction. ”

“ They live their sordid lives and pass into Hell, a vast and countless number. Oh, how blind they are, how wayward, and how full of folly! If they were to make but a single pilgrimage to these thirty-three shrines sacred to our Lady of Mercy, a pure and wonderful light would shine from their feet, feet made spiritually strong to crush down all evil, to scatter the hundred and thirty-six hells into fragments. ”

“ Hell is formed of nine concentric, ever-narrowing terraces, or circles, exhibiting a great variety of landscapes, rivers, and lakes, gloomy forests and sandy deserts, all shrouded in utter darkness except where flickering flames tear the thick pall of night, or the red-hot walls of Dis gleam balefully over the waters of the Stygian marsh. Here are punished the various groups of sinners, whom Dante sees, whose suffering he describes, and with whom he converses as he makes his way downward from circle to circle. ”

“ Those who had been foolhardy enough to peep through the windows after nightfall, saw within the spectres of the long-departed denizens engaged in their wonted occupations—headless forms danced through the moonlit apartments, and on one occasion a godly minister and two pious elders were scared out of their senses, by the terrible vision of a raw head and blood-dripping arm, which protruded from the wall in this terrible street, and flourished a sword above their heads, and many other terrors which are duly chronicled in that old calender of diablerie, Satan's Invisible World. ”

“ Enchanted indeed this valley also plight be, but by a spell of evil. It is the nearest possible approach to the familiar conception of hell. A stretch of white siliceous soil, streaked here and there with the blood-coloured stains of hematite, or the livid yellow of sulphur, is pitted all over with lakes, pools, and small deep pot-holes of boiling mud, sometimes thick, sometimes thin, but always scalding, bubbling, spirting, and threatening. Chief of all the horrors is the well-named lake, “Gates of Hell.” ”