of a thousand years; so that the soul, in each migration, makes a selection of its life-destiny, and renews its penance ten times, until it is enabled to return to an incorporeal existence with God, and to the pure contemplation of Him and the ideal world. Philosophic souls only escape after a three-fold migration, in each of which they choose again their first mode of life. All other souls are judged in the nether world after their first life, and there do penance for their guilt in different quarters; the incurable only are thrust down forever into Tartarus. He attaches eternal punishment to certain particularly abominable sins, while such as have lived justly repose blissfully in the dwelling of a kindred star until their entrance into a second life. Plato was clearly acquainted with the fact of the necessity of an intermediate state between eternal happiness and misery, a state of penance and purification after death." [1] [Footnote 1: "The Gentile and the Jew," Vol. I. pp. 301-320.] The popular notion of Charon, the ferryman of the lower world, refusing to carry over the river Acheron the souls of such as had not been buried, but leaving them to wander on the shores for a century before he would consent, or rather before he was permitted by the rulers of the Hades to do so, contains a vestige of the belief in a middle state, where some souls had to suffer for a time before they could enter into the abode of the blest. But when it is said that the friends of the deceased could, by interring his remains, secure his entry into the desired repose, we see a more striking resemblance to the doctrine that friends on earth are able to assist the souls undergoing purgation. A remarkable instance of the popular belief in this doctrine is furnished in Grecian history, where the soldiers were encouraged on a certain occasion to risk their lives in the service of their country by their being told to write their names on their arms, so that if any fell his friends could have him properly interred, and thus secure him against all fear of having to wander for a century on the bleak shores of the dividing river. Nothing could better show the hold which this idea had on the minds of the people.