[X] Not only were the lofty and cheering notions of the soul, that were cherished by the more illustrious philosophers of Greece, confined to a few, but even the grosser and dimmer belief in a future state, which the vulgar mythology implied, was not entertained by the multitude. Plato remarked that few, even in his day, had faith in the immortality of the soul; and indeed the Hades of the ancients was not for the Many. Amongst those condemned we find few criminals, except the old Titans, and such as imitated them in the one crime--blasphemy to the fabled gods: and the dwellers of Elysium are chiefly confined to the poets and the heroes, the oligarchy of earth. [Y] If a man wishes to leave a portion to his natural child, his lawyer will tell him to name the child as if it were a stranger to his blood. If he says, "I leave to John Tompson, of Baker-street, L10,000," John Tompson may probably get the legacy; if he says, "I leave to my son, John Tompson, of Baker-street, L10,000," and the said John Tompson _is_ his son (_a natural one_), it is a hundred to one if John Tompson ever touches a penny! Up springs the Inhuman Law, with its multiform obstacles, quibbles, and objections--proof of identity--evidence of birth!--Many and many a natural child has thus been robbed and swindled out of his sole claim upon redress--his sole chance of subsistence. In most civilised countries a father is permitted to own the offspring, whom, unless he do so, he has wronged at its very birth--whom, if he do not so, he wrongs irremedially; with us the error is denied reparation, and the innocence is sentenced to outlawry. Our laws, with relation to illegitimate children, are more than unjust--they are inhuman. CONSTANCE; OR, THE PORTRAIT. PART THE FIRST. I.