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"The last loud trumpet-notes on high Peal through the echoing sky, And cleave the quivering ground" breaking, with dreadful summons, "the eternal calm wherewith the grave is bound." "Facilis descensus!"
Do you send all your visitors, of whatever name or nation, direct to the upper regions the moment they enter? Why, then, make the northwest passage thither the most conspicuous route from the door? Do you intend to restrict the family to the back stairs, which by your showing are, like the famous descensus Averno, wonderfully easy to go down, but mighty hard to get up again?
"Can you explain to me what benefit you proposed to yourself when you played for such stakes as that?" "I hoped to win back what I had lost." "Facilis descensus Averni!" said the Duke, shaking his head. "Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis." No doubt, he thought, that as his son was at Oxford, admonitions in Latin would serve him better than in his native tongue.
As he approached the entrance to that den of infamy, from which his mind recoiled even while in the act of taking shelter there, his pace slackened, while the steep and broken stairs reminded him of the facilis descensus Averni, and rendered him doubtful whether it were not better to brave the worst which could befall him in the public haunts of honourable men, than to evade punishment by secluding himself in those of avowed vice and profligacy.
These vile books I discovered by accident carefully hidden away in my son's bedroom. "Facilis descensus Averni!" You will easily imagine the humiliation of a parent who, having devoted his life to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathen, finds that his own son has fallen as low as the lowest savage.
These words undoubtedly indicate the accomplishment of the "facilis descensus Averno" by the native deities. Elves, brownies, gnomes, and trolds were all at one time Scotch or Irish gods. The trolds obtained a character similar to that of the more modern succubus, and have left their impression upon Elizabethan English in the word "trull."
Non facilis descensus. With your face to the mountain you have only the present surface and the effort for that instant. But when you turn your back on the mountain the imminent danger appears. It is not merely ahead, but the sides are much more dangerous. On the way down we had more cannonades.
This was just after Mr Zachariah Lathrope, the American passenger, had so well illustrated Virgil's line, facilus descensus averni, in coming down the stairway by the run, on the top of a "comber;" and, although the steward had lit one of the swinging lamps over the cuddy table, it only served, with its feeble flickering light, to "make the darkness visible" and render the scene more sombre.
When once the feeling has come upon an editor or a critic that he may allow himself to be influenced by other considerations than the duty h owes to the public, all sense of critical or of editorial honesty falls from him at once. Facilis descensus Averni. In a very short time that editorial honesty becomes ridiculous to himself.
In poverty "Facilis descensus Averni." But many a poor soldier had sloped down there into the boggy canal of Avernus before him. Nay, he had three corporals and a sergeant for company. But his lot was relieved by two strange things, presently to appear. In 1793 war again broke out, the great French war.
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