which seemed like clouds but were in fact mountains.

   'Some half-dozen hours,' said Tiresias, 'will bring us to the palace of Saturn. We shall arrive for dinner; the right hour. Let me recommend your Majesty to order the curtains of your litter to be drawn, and, if possible, to resume your dreams.'

   'They were not pleasant,' said Proserpine, 'I dreamt of my mother and the Parcæ. Manto, methinks I'll read. Hast thou some book?'

   'Here is a poem, Madam, but I fear it may induce those very slumbers you dread.'

   'How call you it?'

   '"The Pleasures of Oblivion." The poet apparently is fond of his subject.'

   'And is, I have no doubt, equal to it. Hast any prose?'

   'An historical novel or so.'

   'Oh! if you mean those things as full of costume as a fancy ball, and almost as devoid of sense, I'll have none of them. Close the curtains; even visions of the Furies are preferable to these insipidities.'

   The halt of the litter roused the Queen from her slumbers. 'We have arrived,' said Manto, as she assisted in withdrawing the curtains.

   The train had halted before a vast propylon of rose-coloured granite. The gate was nearly two hundred feet in height, and the sides of the propylon, which rose like huge moles, were sculptured with colossal figures of a threatening aspect. Passing through the propylon, the Queen of Hell and her attendants entered an avenue in length about three-quarters of a mile, formed of colossal figures of the same character and substance, alternately raising in their arms javelins or battle-axes, as if about to strike. At the end of this heroic avenue appeared the palace of Saturn. Ascending a hundred steps of black marble, you stood before a portico supported by twenty columns of the same material and shading a single portal of bronze. Apparently the palace formed an immense quadrangle; a vast tower rising from each corner, and springing from the centre a huge and hooded dome. A crowd of attendants, in grey and sad-coloured raiment, issued from the portal of the palace at the approach of Proserpine, who remarked with strange surprise their singular countenances and demeanour; for rare in this silent assemblage was any visage resembling aught she had seen, human or divine. Some bore the heads of 

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