In 1757 an English clergyman, Dr. Swinden, published a book entitled, _Researches on the Nature of the Fire of Hell and the Place where it is situated_. He places it in the sun. According to him the Christians of the first century had placed it beneath the earth on account of a false interpretation of the descent of Jesus into hell after his crucifixion, and by false ideas of cosmography. He attempted to show, 1st, that the terrestrial globe is too small to contain even the angels that fell from heaven after their battle; 2nd, that the fire of hell is real, and that the closed globe of earth could not support it a sufficiently long period; 3rd, that the sun alone presents itself as the necessary place, being a well-sustained fire, and directly opposite in situation to heaven, since the empyreal is round the outside of the universe, and the sun in the centre. What a change to the present ideas, even of doctors of divinity, in a hundred years! So far, then, for mediaeval ideas on the position and character of hell. Next as to purgatory. The voyage to purgatory that has met with most success is certainly the celebrated Irish legend of St. Patrick, which for several centuries was admitted as authentic, and the account of which was composed certainly a century before the poem of Dante. This purgatory, the entrance to which is drawn in more than one illuminated manuscript, is situated in Ireland, on one of the islands of Lough Derg, County Donegal, where there are still two chapels and a shrine, at which annual ceremonies are performed. A knight, called Owen, resolved to visit it for penance; and the chronicle gives us an account of his adventures. First he had his obsequial rites performed, as if he had been dead, and then he advanced boldly into the deep ravine; he marched on courageously, and entered into the semi-shadows; he marched on, and even this funereal twilight abandoned him, and "when he had gone for a long time in this obscurity, there appeared to him a little light as it were from a glimmer of day." He arrived at a house, built with much care, an imposing mansion of grief and hope, a marvellous edifice, but similar nevertheless to a monkish cloister, where there was no more light than there is in this world in winter at vesper-time. The knight was in dreadful suspense. Suddenly he heard a terrible noise, as if the universe was in a riot; for it seemed certainly to him as if every kind of beast and every man in the world were together, and each gave utterance to their own cry, at one time and with one voice, so that they could not make a more frightful noise. Then commenced his trials, and discourse with the infernal beings; the demons yelled with delight or with fury round him. "Miserable wretch," said some, "you are come here to suffer." "Fly," said others, "for you have not behaved well in the time that is passed: if you will take our advice, and will go back again to the world, we will take it as a great favour and courtesy."