ANTE-HELL.--It is nightfall on Good Friday when Dante reads the terrible inscription on the infernal portal (_Inf._ iii. 1-9): “Leave all hope, ye that enter.” The sense of the whole inscription is hard to him, but Virgil gently leads him in. In the dark plain of Ante-Hell, disdained alike by Mercy and by Justice, are those “who lived without blame and without praise,” mingled with the Angels who kept neutral between God and Lucifer. Here the pusillanimous, who, taking no side in the struggle between good and evil, would follow no standard on earth, now rush for all eternity after a banner, “which whirling ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause.” Further on towards the centre, flowing round the mouth of Hell itself, is Acheron; where the souls of the lost assemble, and are conveyed across by Charon in his boat. Unconsciously borne across, Dante with Virgil now stands on the verge of the abyss, hearkening to the gathering thunder of endless wailings. STRUCTURE AND MORAL TOPOGRAPHY OF HELL.--Hell is a vast pit or funnel piercing down to the centre of the earth, formed when Lucifer and his Angels were hurled down from Heaven. It lies beneath the inhabited world, whose centre is Jerusalem and Mount Calvary; its base towards the surface, and its apex at the centre. It is divided into nine concentric circles, the lower of which are separated by immense precipices--circles which grow more narrow in circumference, more intense and horrible in suffering, until the last is reached where Lucifer is fixed in the ice at the earth’s centre, at the furthest point from God, buried below Jerusalem, where his power was overthrown on the Cross (_cf. Inf._ xxxiv. 106-126).