ABSTRACT
Nature indeed, as a beneficent mother, offers the rich treasury of life to all, and the universal Father, it is said, keeps the gate of the fatal cavern open for the convenience of mankind. The descent, therefore, is allowed on all hands to be easy; but the ascent otherwise; the gate indeed being so narrow, close, and difficult to discern, that there be few, and they immortals only, that are able to pass through. The allusion to these gates is frequent in antiquity, and that of Homer in the thirteenth book of the Odyssey, describing the cave in Ithaca has been the suhject of many comments.
