s at one time a terrible disturbance and outbreak, arising
from a dispute between the Papists, the Mahometans, and the bloody-minded
Roundheads, as to which has done most service to the cause of hell,--the
Koran, the Creed of Rome, or the Solemn League and Covenant. Lucifer is
only able to quell this disturbance--during which Mahomet and Pope Julius
assault each other tooth and nail--by causing his old picked soldiers,
the champions of hell, to tear the combatants from each other. Amidst
interruptions like these the debate proceeds. Each of the personified
crimes and vices in succession--amongst whom are Mammon, Pride,
Inconsiderateness, Wantonness, and the Demon of _Tobacco_--offers to go
to Britain and do his best to further the views of his master. Lucifer,
however, after listening to them all and acknowledging the peculiar merit
of each, says that none of them is of sufficient power to be relied upon
in the present emergency, but that he has a darling friend, who, with
their co-operation, is equal to the enterprise. The friend turns out to
be Ease--pleasant Ease--on whose merits he expatiates with great
eloquence, and with whom he requests them to co-operate. 'Go with her,'
says he, 'and keep everybody in his sleep and his rest, in prosperity and
comfort, abundance and carelessness, and then you will see the poor
honest man, as soon as he shall drink of the alluring cup of Ease, become
a perverse, proud, untractable churl; the industrious labourer change
into a careless waggish rattler; and every other person become just as
you would desire him . . . Follow her to Britain,' he says in conclusion,
'and be as obedient to her as to our own royal Majesty'!

Then comes the finale:--

'At this moment the huge bolt was shaken, and Lucifer and his chief
counsellors were struck to the vortex of extremest hell, and oh! how
horrible it was to see the throat of Unknown opening to receive them!
"Well!" said the Angel, "we will now return; but you have not seen
anything in comparison with the whole which is within the bounds of
Destruction, and if you had seen the whole, it is nothing to the
inexpressible misery which exists in Unknown, for it is not possible
to form an idea of the world in extremest hell." And at that word the
celestial messenger snatched me up to the firmament of the accursed
kingdom of darkness by a way I had not seen, whence I obtained, from
the palace along all the fir