I Had done myself the honour to write to you long ago, but wanted a convenience of sending my letter; for you must not imagine ’tis as easy a matter for us on this side the river _Styx_, to maintain a correspondence with you in the upper world, as ’tis to send a pacquet from _London_ to _Rotterdam_, or from _Paris_ to _Madrid_: But upon the news of a fresh war ready to break out in your part of the world, (which, by the by, makes us keep holy-day here in hell) _Pluto_ having thought fit to dispatch an extraordinary messenger to see how your parliament, upon whose resolutions the fate of _Europe_ seems wholly to depend, will behave themselves in this critical conjuncture. I tipp’d the fellow a George to carry this letter for me, and leave it with the master at _Will_’s in his way to _Westminster_. I am not insensible, gentlemen, that _Homer_, _Virgil_, _Dante_, Don _Quevedo_, and many more before me, have given an account of these subterranean dominions, for which reason it may look like affectation or vanity in me to meddle with a subject so often handled; but if new travels into _Italy_, _Spain_ and _Germany_, are daily read with approbation, because new matters of enquiry and observation perpetually arise, I don’t see why the present state of the _Plutonian_ kingdoms may not be acceptable, there having been as great changes and alterations in these infernal regions, as in any other part of the universe whatever. When I shook hands with your upper hemisphere, I stumbled into a dark, uncouth, dismal lane, which, if it be lawful to compare great things with small, somewhat resembles that dusky dark cut under the mountains called the _grotto_ of _Puzzoli_ in the way to _Naples_. I was in so great a consternation, that I don’t remember exactly how long it was, but this I remember full well, that there were a world of ditches on both sides of the wall, adorned and furnished with harpies, gorgons, centaurs, chimeras, and such like pretty curiosities, which could not but give a man a world of titillation as he traveled on the road. The three-headed _Gerion_, put me in mind of the master of the _Temple_’s three intellectual minds, and when I saw _Briares_ with his hundred arms and hands, out of my zeal to king _William_ and his government, I could not but wish that we had so well qualify’d a person for secretary of state ever since the Revolution; for having so many heads and hands to employ, he might easily have managed all affairs domestick and foreign, and been both dictator and clerk to himself. Which besides the advantage of keeping secret all orders and instructions, (and that you know, gentlemen, is of no small importance in politicks) would have saved his majesty no inconsiderable sum in his civil list.