the River of Bliss through midst of Heaven Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber-stream.-iii. 358; while "immortal Amarant" there

. . . flowers aloft, shading the Fount of Life.

The trees of Heaven produce nectar and manna,
Though," says the Angel to Adam,

food."

66

Though in Heaven the Trees

Of Life ambrosial fruitage bear, and vines

Yield nectar; though from off the boughs each morn
We brush mellifluous dews, and find the ground

Covered with pearly grain.—v. 426.

angels'

Beneath the surface of the soil lay rocks and various minerals, as on earth (vi. 472 seq.); for as the Angel elsewhere says,

Though what if Earth

Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought !—

-V. 574.

Like Earth, too, Heaven had its succession of day and night :

Evening now approached—

For we have also our evening and our morn;
We ours for change delectable not need.—v. 627.

Now when ambrosial night, with clouds exhaled
From that high mount of God whence light and shade
Spring both, the face of highest Heaven had changed
To grateful twilight-for night comes not there
In darker veil-and roseate dews disposed

All but the unsleeping eyes of God to rest.—v. 642.

All night the dreadless angel unpursued

Through Heaven's wide champaign held his way till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand

Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave

Within the Mount of God, fast by his throne,

Where light and darkness in perpetual round

Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night:

Light issues forth, and at the other door

Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour

To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here. And now went forth the Morn,

Such as in highest Heaven, arrayed in gold

:

Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams.—vi. 1.

The poet does not mention the mode or the exact time of the formation of Hell. In the battle of the angels, Michael (vi. 276) would seem to speak of it as in existence at that time, and when God is sending the Son to drive them out of Heaven, he speaks of them as being

To their prepared ill mansion driven down.-vi. 738. And it is added:

Hell at last

Yawning received them whole and on them closed;
Hell, their fit habitation, fraught with fire

Unquenchable, the house of woe and pain.―vi. 874.

The exact situation of Hell of course could not be assigned. It lay in some part of Chaos,*

As far removed from God and light of Heaven

As from the centre thrice to the utmost pole.-i. 73 ;

that is, three semidiameters of the World. The rebel angels first appear in it, weltering in a lake of liquid fire, while

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed.-i. 61.

Thence extended "dry land," which burned

With solid, as the lake with liquid, fire.

This land, like the soil of Heaven and Earth, contained within it mineral riches, whence Mammon constructs

Pandæmonium, the high capital

Of Satan and his peers.-i. 756.

When the fallen angels proceeded to explore this land,—

* This idea occurs in Milton's earlier writings: "To banish for ever into a local hell, whether in the air or in the centre, or in that uttermost and bottomless gulf of Chaos, deeper from holy bliss than the world's diameter multiplied." -Doctrine of Divorce, b. ii. ch. 4. The idea of Hell being in the centre occurs also in Paradise Lost:-

In heaven or earth or under earth in hell.-iii. 321.

This however was probably only a slip of his memory. See above, p. 209.

Through many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous,
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death;
A universe of death, which God by curse

Created evil, for evil only good,

Where all life dies, death lives and nature breeds

Perverse all monstrous, all prodigious things,

Abominable, unutterable, and worse

Than fables yet have feigned or fear conceived.—ii. 418.
Through this region ran the four infernal rivers, Styx, Ache-
ron, Cocytus, Phlegethon, while that of Lethe separated it from
a "frozen continent,"*

dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms

Of whirlwind and dire hail.-ii. 588.

The vault of Hell is terminated by a portal,

And thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock

Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,

Yet unconsumed.-ii. 645.

After the expulsion of the rebel angels, the Son of God,
on the wings of Cherubim

Uplifted, in paternal glory rode

Far into Chaos and the world unborn.-vii. 218;

and there setting the "golden compasses" of God, he marked
out the circumference of the World, which then came into ex-
istence under the influence of the Spirit of God. It was a
"firm opacous globe," i.e. a hollow sphere, of which we shall
presently describe the interior, restricting ourselves here to
the outer surface.

When Satan lighted on it in coming out of Chaos,

A globe far off

It seemed, now seems a boundless continent,
Dark, waste, and wild, under the frown of night
Starless exposed, and ever-threatening storms

Of Chaos blustering round, inclement sky, (iii. 422,)

* These are also the four rivers of Dante's Hell, and he too places Lethe in
a separate region.

except on the side facing the wall of Heaven, whence came light that made a "glimmering air." As he proceeded along it he discerned "a gleam of dawning light," which drew him toward it, and there he saw a "structure high" of golden stairs ascending up to Heaven,

At top whereof, but far more rich, appeared
The work as of a kingly palace-gate

With frontispiece of diamond and gold

Embellished; thick with sparkling orient gems
The portal shone.*-iii. 504.

At the other extremity, on the surface of the globe

a bright sea flowed

Of jasper or of liquid pearl.

"Thence," says the Argument, "Satan comes to the gate of Heaven, described ascending by stairs and the waters above the firmament that flow about it," which waters we will presently show to be the Crystalline of the Ptolemaic Astronomy. Directly opposite the stairs a passage down to the earth opened in the solid globe.

Milton's idea of the primitive earth was, that it occupied the centre of the world, which had only been created for its use (ix. 103 seq.). As we have just seen, he makes the angel hint that it resembled heaven; and the same angel, in his account of creation, says,—

Earth now

Seemed like to heaven, a seat where gods might dwell
Or wander with delight, and love to haunt

Her sacred shades.-vii. 327.

Earth in her rich attire

Consummate lovely smiled.-ib. 501.

The poet also makes Satan exclaim :—

O earth! how like to heaven! if not preferred

More justly, seat worthier of gods, as built
With second thoughts, reforming what was old.

For what god after better worse would build ?—ix. 99.

*See Excursus I.

Milton, in fact, taxed his imagination to the utmost in his conception of earth before it had been polluted by the entrance of sin and death, and he was unable to go any further in that of Heaven. Besides, the language of Scripture, to which he bowed so submissively, led him to believe in the similitude.