on vacuity; the nostrils are stuffed with hair; the trunk trembles as it moves; the bones appear beneath the surface; the back is bowed, and the joints are bent; the digestive fire is extinct, and there is little appetite and little vigour; walking, rising, sleeping, sitting, are all painful efforts; the ear is dull; the eye is dim; the mouth is disgusting with dribbling saliva; the senses no longer are obedient to the will; and as death approaches, the things that are perceived even are immediately forgotten. The utterance of a single sentence is fatiguing, and wakefulness is perpetuated by difficult breathing, coughing, and painful exhaustion. The old man is lifted up by somebody else; he is clothed by somebody else; he is an object of contempt to his servants, his children, and his wife. Incapable of cleanliness, of amusement, or food, or desire, he is laughed at by his dependants, and disregarded by his kin; and dwelling on the exploits of his youth, as on the actions of a past life, he sighs deeply, and is sorely distressed. Such are some of the pains which old age is condemned to suffer. I will now describe to you the agonies of death.

The neck droops; the feet and hands are relaxed; the body trembles; the man is repeatedly exhausted, subdued, and visited with interrupted knowledge; the principle of selfishness afflicts him, and he thinks what will become of my wealth, my lands, my children, my wife, my servants, my house? the joints of his limbs are tortured with severe pains, as if cut by a saw, or as if they were pierced by the sharp arrows of the destroyer; he rolls his eyes, and tosses about his hands and feet; his lips and palate are parched and dry, and his throat, obstructed by foul humours and deranged vital airs, emits a rattling sound; he is afflicted with burning heat, and with thirst, and with hunger; and he at last passes away, t́ortured by the servants of the judge of the dead, to undergo a renewal of his sufferings in another body. These are the agonies which men have to endure when they die. I will now describe to you the tortures which they suffer in hell.

Men are bound, when they die, by the servants of the king of Tartarus with cords, and beaten with sticks, and have then to encounter the fierce aspect of Yama, and the horrors of their terrible route. In the

different hells there are various intolerable tortures with burning sand, fire, machines, and weapons; some are severed with saws, some roasted in forges, some are chopped with axes, some buried in the ground, some are mounted on stakes, some cast to wild beasts to be devoured, some are gnawed by vultures, some torn by tigers, some are boiled in oil, some rolled in caustic slime, some are precipitated from great heights, some tossed upwards by engines. The number of punishments inflicted in hell, which are the consequences of sin, is infinite 2.