her teeth for a pickaxe, her rib for a knife, her garment's hem for a noose, and wholesale murder for a religion. The uplifted right hand of the demoness has been interpreted as intimating a divine purpose in the havoc around her, and it is possible that some such euphemism attached to the attitude before the Thug accepted it as his own benediction from this highly decorated personage of human cruelty. The ancient reverence for Kali has gradually passed to her mitigated form--Durgá. Around her too are visible the symbols of destruction; but she is supposed to be satisfied with pumpkin-animals, and the weapons in her ten hands are believed to be directed against the enemies of the gods, especially against the giant king Muheshu. She is mother of the beautiful boy Kartik, and of the elephant-headed inspirer of knowledge Ganesa. She is reverenced now as female energy, the bestower of beauty and fruitfulness on women. The identity of war-gods and death-demons, in the most frightful conceptions which have haunted the human imagination, is of profound significance. These forms do not represent peaceful and natural death, not death by old age,--of which, alas, those who cowered before them knew but little,--but death amid cruelty and agony, and the cutting down of men in the vigour of life. That indeed was terrible,--even more than these rude images could describe. But there are other details in these hideous forms. The priest has added to the horse and sword of war the adored serpent, and hideous symbols of the 'Land of the Dead.' For it is not by terror of death, but of what he can persuade men lies beyond, that the priest has reigned over mankind. When Isabel (in 'Measure for Measure') is trying to persuade her brother that the sense of death lies most in apprehension, the sentenced youth still finds death 'a fearful thing.' Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, And blown with violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of these, that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling!--'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death. In all these apprehensions of Claudio there is no thought of annihilation. What if he had seen death as an eternal sleep? Let Hamlet answer:-- To die,--to sleep;-- No more;--and, by a sleep, to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to,--'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.