easy, sleeps in its deep basin, long ago divested by the axe of Agrippa of the impenetrable gloom and mysterious dread which its dark forests had created; its steep banks partly covered with natural copsewood bright with a living mosaic of cyclamens and lilies, and partly formed of cultivated fields.  During my visit the delicious odour of the bean blossom pervaded the fields, reminding me vividly of familiar rural scenes far away.  Yonder is the subterranean passage called by the common people the Sibyl’s Cave, where AEneas came and plucked the golden bough, and, led by the melancholy priestess of Apollo, went down to the dreary world of the dead.  It was the general tradition of Pagan nations that the point of departure from this world, as well as the entrance to the next, was always in the west.  We find the largest number of the prehistoric relics of the dead on the western shores of our own country.  The cave of Loch Dearg—­at first connected with primitive pagan rites and subsequently the traditional entrance to the Purgatory of St. Patrick—­is situated in the west of Ireland, and corresponds to the cave of the Sibyl and the Lake of Avernus in Italy.  Indeed the word Avernus itself bears such a close resemblance to the Gaelic word Ifrinn—­the name of the infernal regions, and to the name of Loch Hourn, the Lake of Hell, on the north-west coast of Scotland—­that it has given rise to the supposition that it was the legacy of a prehistoric Celtic people who at one time inhabited the Phlegraean Fields.  On the other side of Lake Avernus is the Mare Morto, the Lake or Sea of the Dead, with its memories of Charon and his ghostly crew, which now shines in the setting sun like a field of gold sparkling with jewels; and beyond it are the Elysian Fields, the abodes of the blessed, the rich life of whose soil breaks out at every pore into a luxuriant maze of vines and orange trees, and all manner of lovely and fruitful vegetation.  Still farther behind is the Acherusian Marsh of the poets, now called the Lake of Fusaro, because hemp and flax are put to steep in it; and the river Styx itself, by which the gods dare not swear in vain, reduced to an insignificant rill flowing into the sea.  It is most interesting to think of the apostle Paul being associated with this enchanted region.  His presence on the scene is necessary to complete its charm, and to remind us that the vain dreams of those blind old seekers after God were all fulfilled in Him who opened a door for us in heaven, and brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel.

St. Paul must have noticed—­though Scripture, intent only upon the unfolding of the religious drama, makes no reference to it—­the crater of Solfatara, one of the most wonderful phenomena of this wonderful region, for it lay directly in his path, and was only about a mile distant from Puteoli.  This was the famous Forum of Vulcan, where the god fashioned his terrible tools, and shook the earth with the fierce fires of his forge.  On account of