il things to be (there is no _final_ strength but in
rightness). Nothing more witty, nor more inventively horrible, has yet
been produced in the evil literature, or by the evil art, of man: nor
can I conceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities
of corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, tremendous,
hideous in shamelessness, some put into the mouths of priests; the
illustrations are, in a word, one continuous revelry in the most
loathsome and monstrous aspects of death and sin, enlarged into
fantastic ghastliness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion
and trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of hell. Take this
following for a general type of what they seek in death: one of the
most labored designs is of a man cut in two, downwards, by the sweep
of a sword--one half of him falls toward the spectator; the other half
is elaborately drawn in its section--giving the profile of the divided
nose and lips; cleft jaw--breast--and entrails; and this is done with
farther pollution and horror of intent in the circumstances, which I
do not choose to describe--still less some other of the designs which
seek for fantastic extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of
death. But of all the 425, there is not one, which does not violate
every instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, written in the
human soul.

31. Now, my friend, among the many "Signs of the Times" the production
of a book like this is a significant one: but it becomes more
significant still when connected with the farther fact, that M.
Gustave Dore, the designer of this series of plates, has just been
received with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as the
fittest and most able person whom they could at present find to
illustrate, to their minds, and recommend with grace of sacred art,
their hitherto unadorned Bible for them.

Of which Bible, and of the use we at present make of it in England,
having a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to
the examination of that verse which haunted me through the Japanese
juggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the
public esteem of it to consider at your leisure.

LETTER VIII.

THE FOUR POSSIBLE THEORIES RESPECTING THE AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.

_March 7, 1867._

32. I have your yesterday's letter, but must not allow myself to be
diverted from the business in h