at his door, were many books, pots and flagons, a few sticks and bludgeons, compasses, cords and ship’s tackle.  “Scholars have gone this way,” said I.  “Yea, lonely and helpless, far from the succour of those who loved them, their very garments stolen from them.  Those,” he continued, pointing to the pots, “are relics of the boon companions, whose feet were benumbed under the benches, while their heads were seething in drink and noise; those things over there belonged to those who journeyed amid snow-clad mountains, and to North Sea traders.”  The next was a lanky skeleton called Fear-Death—­so transparent you could see he had no heart; at his door, too, there were bags and chests, bars and strongholds.  Through this one went userers and traitors, oppressors and murderers, though many of these last called at the next door, at which was a Death named Gallows, with a rope ready round his neck.  Next to him was Love-Death, and at his feet thousands of musical instruments and song-books, love-letters, spots and pigments to beautify the face, and hundreds of tinselled toys for the same purpose, together with a few swords:  “With these rivals have fought duels for their mistresses, and some have killed themselves,” said Sleep.  I could see that this Death was sandblind.  At the next door was a Death whose colour was worst of all, and whose liver was entirely gone—­his name was Envy.  “This is the Death,” said Sleep, “which brings hither those who have lost money, slanderers, and a rideress or two, who are jealous of the law which demands that a wife should submit herself unto her husband.”  “Pray, sir, what is a rideress?” “A rideress is a woman who will over-ride her husband, her neighbourhood, and the whole country if she can, and by dint of long riding, at last, rides a devil from that door down to the bottomless pit.”  Next was the door of Ambition-Death for those who hold their heads high, and break their necks, for want of looking on the ground they tread on; at this door lay crowns, sceptres, standards, petitions for offices, and all manner of arms of heraldry and war.

But before I had time to notice any more of these innumerable doors, I heard a voice bidding me by name to be dissolved, and at the word I felt myself beginning to melt like a snowball in the heat of the sun; then my master gave me a sleeping draught, so that I slumbered; and when I awoke, he had taken me by some road or other far away on the other side of the castle.  I perceived myself in a pitch-dark vale of infinite radius, methought, and shortly, I saw by a few bluish lights, like the flickering flame of a candle, countless, ah! countless shades of men, some afoot and some on horseback, rushing back and fro like the wind, in awful silence and solemnity; the land was barren, bleak and blasted, without either grass or hay, trees or animals, save deadly beasts and poisonous vermin of every kind—­serpents, snakes, lice, frogs, worms, locusts, gids and all such that exist on man’s