their mouths, and their hoarse voices sound like thunder in their throats. In all there is an innate propensity to wick edness in their minds ; in all there is a disposition prone to every crime. In the midst of the water stands Tantalus, thirsting with it up to his throat ; while, that he may not drink thereof, it ever retreats from his mouth. Here is mighty Sisyphus rolling the stone that rolls everlastingly back ; so that his is a labour without an end. Continually does the devouring vulture gnaw at the liver of Tityus ; which, that it may be for ever perishing, is ever on the point of perishing. Some dreadful famine, some severe drought attacks, and labour without cessation fatigues. Some are frozen by cold, others are scorched by the heat of flames ; each as he has deserved is here visited with a punishment his own. An entrance is open to all, an exit to none ; all does that place devour, and to the Furies consign. Tisiphone, in conjunction with those dreadful sisters, awards the punishments which they have been found to deserve to endure. Now to the guilty do I leave Styx, now Lethe, now Acheron ; once again with much ado do I retrace my steps to those above.' ""When he had recited this last line, at length returning to himself, and aroused, as it were, from sleep, he raised his head, and said to one of the brethren, who, for the purpose of seeing the miracle, had come with the rest, eyeing him most intently : ' "Wonder not at my features, for die thou shalt. A grievous and sudden end shall overtake thee.' After this, turning his eyes upon the assemblage of the brethren, not less elegantly than if he had been gifted from his infancy with the eloquence of Tully" did he foretell in the Latin tongue certain events which were then to come to pass. And, as these things afterwards did come to pass, just as he had foretold, being filled ourselves with the greatest astonishment, in order that others, as well as ourselves, may admire the lines which this lay brother composed, who was never in any degree acquainted with letters, we have determined, on account of the stories there interwoven, to send them from school to school, in order that, by their judgment, this assertion of ours may be thoroughly sifted. Some indeed there are, who, in consequence of the fables inserted, despise the rest ; while some 4 7 At all events, he may be safely pronounced Tully's equal in demerit as a poet.