Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 2).djvu/418

404 splendour whose internal surface may perform the same office to the processes of vital and material action on the body of the sun, as its external one does upon those of the planets. A certain degree of plausibility is conferred on this notion by the observation that the interior surface, as far as can be collected from a view of the sides of the chasm, is of an obscurer colour than the external one: what are called spots in the sun, being no more than immense rents produced probably by streams of wind in the incumbent mass of vapours, which disclose the opaque body of the sun itself. All this diminishes the probability of the sun being a Hell, by shewing that there is no reason for supposing it considerably hotter than the planets. Not to mention that the Devils may be like the animalculæ in mutton broth, whom you may boil, as much as you please, but they will always continue alive and vigorous.

The idea of the sun being Hell, is an attempt at an improvement on the old-established idea of its occupying the centre of the earth. The Devils and the damned would be exceedingly crowded in process of ages, if they were confined within so inconsiderable a sphere.

The Devil and his Angels are called the Powers of the Air, and the Devil himself Lucifer. I cannot discover why he is called Lucifer, except from a misinterpreted passage in Isaiah, where that poet exults over the fall of an Assyrian king, the oppressor of his country:—"How art thou fallen, Lucifer, king of Morning!"—The Devil after having gradually assumed the horns, hoof, tail, and ears of the ancient Gods of the woods, lost them again, although wings had been added. It is