Florence at the instigation of the lord of Romena, a place in the fine valley of the Apennines, called Casentino, appears swollen with dropsy, and tormented by a parching thirst, which he has no means of allaying. He then addresses Dante :"O ye! who in this world of misery,

Wherefore I know not, are exempt from pain,'

Thus he began, attentively regard

Adamo's woe. When living, full supply
Ne'er lack'd me of what most I coveted;

One drop of water now, alas! I crave.

The rills that glitter down the grassy slopes
Of Casentino, making fresh and soft

The banks whereby they glide to Arno's stream,
Stand ever in my view, and not in vain ;
For more the pictur'd semblance dries me up,
Much more than the disease, which makes the flesh
Desert these shrivell'd cheeks. So from the place
Where I trausgress'd, stern justice, urging me,
Takes means to quicken more my lab'ring sighs.'

Canto XXX.

Dante, following Virgil, proceeds to the ninth and lowest circle of hell, divided into four compartments, in which are confined various sorts of traitors. Their torment consists in being plunged into a frozen lake.

beheld

Two spirits by the ice

Pent in one hollow, that the head of one

Was cowl unto the other; and as bread

Is raven'd up through hunger, th' uppermost

Did so apply his fangs to the other's brain
Where the spine joins it.

Among the rest our poet

Dante addresses the uppermost of the two to know the reason of his deadly hate against the other :

:

His jaws uplifting from their fell repast,

That sinner wiped them on the hairs o' the head
Which he behind had mangled, then began:

"Thy will obeying, I call up afresh

Sorrows past cure; which but to think of wrings
My heart.'

'Know I was on earth

Count Ugolino, and the archbishop he
Ruggieri. Why I neighbour him so close,

Now list. That, through effect of his ill thoughts

In him my trust reposing, I was ta'en

And after murder'd, need is not I tell.
What therefore thou canst not have heard-that is
How cruel was the murder-shalt thou hear,
And know if he have wrong'd me. A small grate
Within that mew, which for my sake the name
Of famine bears, where others yet must pine,
Already through its opening sev'ral moons
Had shown me, when I slept the evil sleep
That from the future tore the curtain off.
'When I awoke

Before the dawn, amid their sleep I heard
My sons (for they were with me) weep and ask
For bread. Right cruel art thou if no pang
Thou feel at thinking what my heart foretold;
And if not now, why use thy tears to flow?
Now had they waken'd, and the hour drew near

When they were wont to bring us food; the mind
Of each misgave him through his dream, and I
Heard at its outlet underneath lock'd up

The horrible tower: whence, utt'ring not a word,
I look'd upon the visage of my sons.

I wept not so all stone I felt within.

They wept and one, my little Anselm, cried,
Thou lookest so! Father, what ails thee? Yet
I shed no tears, nor answer'd all that day
Nor the next night, until another sun

Came out upon the world. When a faint beam
Had to our doleful prison made its way,
And in four countenances I descried
The image of my own, on either hand
Through agony I bit; and they, who thought
I did it through desire of feeding, rose

O' the sudden and cried, Father, we should grieve
Far less if thou wouldst eat of us: thou gav'st
These weeds of miserable flesh we wear;
And do thou strip them off from us again.
Then, not to make them sadder, I kept down
My spirit in stillness. That day and the next
We all were silent. Oh! obdurate earth!
Why open'dst not upon us? When we came
To the fourth day, then Gaddo at my feet
Outstretch'd did fling him, crying, Hast no help
For me, my father? There he died; and e'en
Plainly as thou seest me saw I the three
Fall one by one 'twixt the fifth day and sixth:
Whence I betook me, now grown blind, to grope

Over them all, and for three days aloud

Call'd on them who were dead. Then fasting got
The mastery of grief. Thus having spoke
Once more upon the wretch's skull his teeth

He fastened, like a mastiff's 'gainst the bone,
Firm and unyielding.

The poet, in his indignation at the horrid tale, breaks forth into a fearful denunciation against the city of Pisa for its cruelty to the count and his innocent children

Oh thou Pisa, shame

Of all the people who their dwelling make

In that fair region where the Italian voice

Is heard! since that thy neighbours are so slack

To punish, from their deep foundations rise

Capraia and Gorgona, and dam up

The mouth of Arno; that each soul in thec
May perish in the waters. What if fame
Reported that thy castles were betray'd

By Ugolino? yet no right hadst thou

To stretch his children on the rack. For them,

Brigata, Uguccione, and the pair

Of gentle ones, of whom my song hath told,

Their tender years, thon modern Thebes, did made

Uncapable of guilt.

The catastrophe of Count Ugolino happened at Pisa in 1289. The count, an ambitious leader, was accused of treachery to his country, and, being overpowered by the oposite party, at the head of which was the Archbishop Ruggieri, he was shut up in a tower near the Arno with two of his sons, Uguccione and Brigata,

201

and two grandsons, Anselmuccio and Gaddo, the latter still of tender years. After some weeks the archbishop caused the key of the tower to be thrown into the river, and left the five prisoners to be starved to death. The tower was henceforth called "Torre della Fame," "The Tower of Hunger."

332. THE DIVINA COMMEDIA OF DANTE.-III.

Arriving at the bottom of the ninth circle described, the poet beholds Lucifer, "the emperor who sways the realms of sorrow," standing forth with giant form, at mid-breast from the ice, with three heads, and holding a sinner in each of his mouths. The waist of the giant is at the centre of the earth. Virgil having Dante clinging to his back, turning with the head downwards, passed the central point and climbed up one of the legs of the giant, and between them and the ice; and then, by a secret path ascending, they both emerged on the other hemisphere of the earth, where Dante beheld a lofty hill, which is the mountain of Purgatory. Round the mountain are seven circles or vast cornices, one above the other, making so many prisons, in which the same sins are expiated which have been noticed in Hell, with this difference, that the souls having died in a state of repentance, hope cheers them until their hour of delivery comes. A milder air breathes over this part of the poem, which is divided, like the Inferno, into thirty-three cantos, and contains many beautiful passages full of pathos. Such is the beginning of Canto viii., when Dante, speaking of the evening twilight, thus describes it :

Now was the hour that wakens fond desire

In men at sea, and melts their thoughtful heart
Who in the morn have bid sweet friends farewell,
And pilgrim newly on his road with love
Thrills, if he hear the vesper-bell from far,

That seems to mourn for the expiring day."

A poet of our own times (Byron) who, though less consistent in his judgment than Dante, less comprehensive in his views, and less sincere in his poetical faith, has, like him, made man and man's feelings the main theme of his verse, has also sung the 'Sweet Hour of Twilight,' the 'Ave Maria' of Italy, the Hour of Prayer,' and 'The Hour of Love,' and he has paraphrased the above passage of Dante in the following stanza :

Soft hour which wakes the wish and melts the heart

Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,

As the far bell of vesper makes him start,
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay.

At the foot of the mountain, and before entering the boundaries of Purgatory Proper, our Poet met with many souls which were waiting for leave to begin their period of expiation, having deferred their repentance to the last moments of their life. Among others he saw Manfred, King of Sicily and Naples, who was killed at the battle of Benevento, fighting against Charles of Anjou.

At last being admitted through the portals of Purgatory, Dante sees in the first circle those who expiate the sin of pride by carrying heavy stones, the weight of which bends their bodies to the ground. Among the rest he meets Oderigi ot Gubbio, a miniature painter of some reputation, and a friend of Giotto, who confessed that his pupil Franca, of Bologna, had surpassed him in his art, although through pride he would not acknowledge it in his lifetime. Reflecting upon the precariousness of man's works and fame, Oderigi illustrates it by the example of his wrongs:

O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipp'd
E'en in its height of verdure, if an age

In the second cornice, or circle, the envious are confined, clad in sackcloth, and their eyes sewed up with a thread of wire. He hears two of the sufferers discussing the condition of Italy, and especially that of Tuscany, where a fine description is given of the course of the river Arno, from its source in the mountain of Falterona to its estuary on the coast of Pisa.

In the third circle those who have been prone to anger expiate their guilt by being involved in clouds of dense smoke. A certain Marco Lombardo, a Venetian noble, enters into a disquisition concerning the free will of man, which he defends against the doctrine of necessity :

'Brother,' he thus began, the world is blind,
And thou in truth com'st from it. Ye who live
Do so each cause refer to heav'n above

E'en as its motion of necessity

Drew with it all that moves. If this were so,

Free choice in you were none; nor justice would

There should be joy for virtue, woe for ill.

Your movements have their primeval bent from heaven

Not all.'

In the fourth circle is expiated the sin of indifference, or lukewarmness in piety and virtue ("accidia" in Italian), and in the fifth circle that of avarice.

Proceeding to the sixth circle, Dante and Virgil meet the poet Statius by the way, who tells them that he died a Christian. In the sixth circle the vices of gluttony and intemperance are expiated. Here Dante meets Forese Donati, the brother of his wife, and of Corso Donati, the leader of the Neri, and Dante's enemy. The whole conversation of Dante with Forese, who had died in 1295, before the broils which distracted Florence, breathes the remembrance of former sweet domestic affections, which were rudely broken asunder by civil discord. Dante bere shows himself in an amiable light: he avoids naming Corso and his other political enemies of the Donati family, to which he was allied by marriage, whilst he speaks most kindly of Forese, and his sister Piccarda, who had died a nun. his part, draws a most affectionate picture of his own wife, Nella; whose retired manner and modest worth he contrasts with the profligate manners of Florence's unblushing dames" of that age :

In the sight of God
So much the dearer is my widow prized,

Forese, on

She whom I loved so fondly, as she ranks
More singly eminent for virtuous deeds,

Cauto xxiii.

Reaching the seventh circle of Purgatory, Dante finds in it those who had indulged in the sin of lasciviousness, from which they are purified by fire. From the seventh circle Dante, in company with Virgil and Statius, proceeds to the terrestrial Paradise, which occupies the summit of the mountain of Purgatory, and in which the first man was placed by the Creator. Here Virgil tells him that he is no longer his guide, and that Beatrice will soon appear to lead him through the celestial Paradise, which Virgil is not allowed to enter.

Beatrice makes her appearance, descending in a cloud from heaven, when the spirit of Virgil vanishes away from the sight of Dante. Beatrice, in a literal sense, is the soul of the early love of Dante, but, figuratively, it is understood to mean theology, by the assistance of which the poet is made to understand the mysteries of religion. Beatrice reproves Dante for the errors of his past life, which the poet humbly confesses, and he is taken across the waters of Lethe; and after many mystical visions the poet is drawn up with Beatrice to the heaven, or circle of Paradise.

The Paradise, which forms the third part of Dante's poem, consists of thirtythree cantos, like each of the two preceding parts. The circles or heavens are ten, the lowest being that of the Moon; next to which come those of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn; afterwards the circle of the fixed stars, and then the ninth heaven, where are the hierarchies of the angels; and lastly the empyrcan, which encircles the whole, and is the throne of the Almighty. The whole of this part is interspersed with theological and metaphysical disquisitions, which render it less fit than the other two for exposition or illustration. But this part also contains many highly pootical passages and historical allusions, which will amply repay the reader for its perusal. The souls of the blessed dwell all and eternally together, only partaking more or less of the divine glory in the empyrean, although, to suit the limited capacity of the human understanding, they appear to have different spheres allotted to them. (Paradise,' Canto iv.) Accordingly the poet sces in the first, or lowest sphere, being that of the Moon, the souls of those who, after having made professions of chastity and religious life, have been compelled to violate their vows. Among these the poet sees Piccarda Donati, the sister of Corso, whom her brother took away by force from her monastery to give her in marriage to one of his own party; but she soon after fell ill and died. Dante throughout his poem often recurs to his Florentine connections, political and domestic. In the next sphere, of Mars, are those who have been actuated throughout their upright career in this world more by the wish of gaining the approbation of men than from the feeling of duty to God.

In the sphere of Venus Dante sees those who, after being given to the passion of love, turned that feeling into devotion to God. Here he meets with Charles Martel, the King of Hungary, son of Charles II., Anjou, King of Naples, whom Dante had personally known at Florence.

The fourth sphere is that of the Sun, according to the ancient system of astronomy, which made our earth the centre of the world. In this sphere are the doctors of the church, and among others, Thomas Aquinas, of the order of St. Dominic, who pronounces a panegyric upon St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order; and St. Bonaventura, a Franciscan friar, who delivers a like culogy on St. Dominic. In this Dante had evidently intended to avoid all appearance of the rivalry which existed between those two celebrated monastic orders. And this is another proof, if proof is wanted, that Dante was sincere in his faith, and neither a heretic nor an unbeliever.