lino's touching narrative the most glowing paternal love finds expression beside the most furious hate of his enemies. But it must be observed that Ugolino, in a certain sense, forms an exception in this region. In Dante's poem he is the betrayed, placed next to the traitor, rather than the traitor himself. Then this placing next to each other the most terrible hatred and the most touching paternal love is psychologically most true. Love is so essentially a part of human nature that one would have to be wholly a devil to banish it entirely from his heart. In Ugolino this last remnant of love seems to be wholly concentrated upon his sons. Or perhaps Graul is right in calling to mind (p. 322) the passage of St. Luke, vi, 32-35: "For if ye love them which love ye, what thanks have ye? for sinners also love those that love them. . . . But love ye your enemies," etc. However that that may be, we repeat, the figure of Ugolino here forms an exception; in the midst of the region where icy cold, hatred, treason, rage only dwell, he is the only one from whose lips words of love issue.

Chilliness, indifference, hatred, rage-yes, this hellish region is also to be found upon earth. Here too it is sin which consuinmates its own punishment. The poet of the "Commedia " has not only sung the other world of eternity, but he has also removed from the soul the wrappings of delusive appearance, and has disclosed to us the truth of the inner life of man.

Here we pause. We might, it is true, follow the poet in his wanderings through the other two realms of eternity, and we might investigate, if we are not to see in the torments of the land of expiation the inner struggles of those who seek to conquer sin, to free themselves from it-if we are not to see in the joys of paradise the inner peace, the inner beatitude of those who have become reconciled to God, and therefore to the world and to themselves. But we desire here to limit ourselves to hell. May others better fitted for the task be at the pains to solve in a satisfactory manner the problem here alluded to.

"The description of the condition of the departed souls is only the outer shell. Dante himself says: The theme of the poem is man, who, doing either good or evil, in consequence of the freedom of his will, is subject either to punishing or to recompensing

justice. If, then, the words speak of the eternal life, the true meaning applies to the life upon earth. The physical punishment, the infliction of pain, however variously the fancy of the poet may have graded it, is, after all, but an emblem for the condition. of soul of the sinner hardened in his sin. It is easily seen in many instances how the punishment which the poet assigns to a sin is only an expression of this sin." Thus wrote Witte, the chief of Dante students, in the introduction to his translation of the "Divina Commedia." But neither Witte, nor other investigators in this field, have undertaken to give the proof in each separate instance that the punishments are developed from the respective sins themselves, and are, so to speak, the expression of these sins. A few examples, in which the congruence was, of course, easy to recognize, were made to suffice, and it was perhaps stated that this congruence must, according to the poet's intention, be present also in other instances, where we can no longer trace and recognize it. The present disquisition has, as far as the limits placed permitted, followed the poet step by step and grade by grade, seeking to establish the intimate relation between sin and punishment. It cannot and will not claim to have found the right thing in every instance, but would be content if it had succeeded in proving that it is possible, by dint of meditation, to find the relation, or, as we have called it, the congruence. If it has succeeded in this, though it may need correction, deepening, amplification, modification in particular instances, it has attained one of the objects it had in view.

But only one. Another object was in our mind—namely, to utter, though perhaps not to establish, the thought that DANTE'S

ESCHATOLOGICAL VIEWS AND IDEAS WERE FAR IN ADVANCE OF THE VIEWS AND IDEAS OF HIS TIME.

Herewith we return to the beginning, to the idea with which we started out. It was there designated as an error to see no more in the "Divina Commedia" than a mere picture of the internal and external life upon earth. I cannot assent to the words of Witte, above quoted, if their meaning should be that the punishments which the poet assigns to the sins are to be regarded as merely of this world, or, as Witte expresses it, that "they are only an emblem of the condition of soul of the sinner hardened in his sin." They are that to be sure. That they are this has

often enough been dwelt upon and proved in this disquisition. But they are not that only, but something else besides. Quite in the beginning we said that the "Divina Commedia " contained not only the revealed truth of the soul, but also the revealed truth of the hereafter, and these two in organic connection. To deny this would be to make of the poet of the Poëma sacro one of those Epicuræans che l'anima col corpo morta fanno, or a materialist of the nineteenth century. A Christian poet, whose poem is, first of all, a description of the condition of the departed souls in the hereafter very likely reflected, if he believed at all in a hereafter, in immortality, in life of the spirit after the death of the body-very likely reflected, I say, on that condition of the departed souls in the hereafter which he was about to describe, and his description probably contains the result of his reflections. Or did Dante, perhaps, describe the condition of the departed souls without seriously reflecting thereupon? Or did he describe it quite differently from the manner in which he really imagined it to be? To assume this would be folly.

No, Dante imagined that world as he describes it in his poem. This must not, however, be misunderstood. We do not here speak of the topography of eternity, nor of the geography and architectonic construction of the three realms of the hereafter. All that does not concern our problem in the least. We have only to do with the condition of the souls in the hereafter, with the question: "Wherein, according to Dante's view, did damnation, wherein did eternal bliss, consist?" And to this our assertion applies, that Dante, without doubt, thought and believed eternity to be as he described it in his poem.

And how has he depicted it? The life hereafter is represented as the continuation in a straight line, as an uninterrupted continuation, of this life. It is the completion of what was prepared in this life; the blossoming out of what here existed in the bud, the fulfilment of that which was threatened or promised here below. The false lustre has vanished, the wrappings have dropped, the dross has fallen down, the chaff has flown to the winds. The pure light of truth, which was here fettered, as it were, by the dense atmosphere of the earth and could not penetrate the coarse sense of earth, there shines like the bright sun of noonday, and either warms the unclothed souls with love or burns like fire into

their wounds. That Dante, a child of the middle ages, was able to lift himself to this pure and lofty view-this makes him truly great, and in this he stands alone in his age.

Dante's age imagined eternity as the common belief of the people, or, let us rather say, as superstition still conceives it to-day. In the moment of death the proceedings are fully closed. Yonder the one awakens-and finds himself in heaven. He has become a different person from what he was before his last slumber. His passions, his thoughts, his inclinations, his impulses have died with his body and are forgotten. He sits up yonder and thinks of nothing but singing hallelujah. "The ecclesiastic idea," says Hase very aptly ("Gnosis," 2d ed., ii, 434), "of a constant singing of praises, praying, and hearing sermons, hardly gives promise of a very intellectual life." Another, awaking beyond from the slumber of death, finds himself in hell. He, too, has at bottom become quite a different person. He has only a feeling of pain, perhaps of repentance, left. Fancy has been at pains to depict. the torments of hell as terribly and fearfully as possible, and literature is full of such descriptions, which are as fantastic as they are horrible. Researches have been made from time to time to see if Dante did not imitate such an one. But take in hand whatever one you will-for instance, the vision of Frate Alberico -what a difference! Vivid colorings of torments, which, however, for the most part, have no connection, or only a very slight external one, with the sins! In Dante, on the contrary, the departed souls are what they were in earth-life; the punishments are developed directly and with logical consistency out of the sin itself; the hereafter is the direct continuation of the life on earth. He does not describe punishments for the purpose of heating the fancy and inspiring fear, but only as the natural fruit of sin. That was his deed. To an age which had the most absurd views of the lite hereafter he, as the first and only one, proclaimed: “Heaven and hell are only the poetry of the belief in immortality--you, O human beings, carry either in your breast! In the hereafter only that will be continued and completed which was begun and prepared here below. There is but one bliss-Godliness; but one damnation-Godlessness."

HOMER'S ILIAD.

BY D. J. SNIDER.

Book Seventh.

Each of the preceding Books has been marked by some special characteristic; the Seventh Book also has its particular quality. The main fact which it brings into strong relief is the present equipoise between the two sides. The Greeks and the Trojans are placed in the hovering balance, as it were; the scales sway up and down without any decision. This is also the ethical situation just now; in Troy the wrong of Helen, in the Greek camp the wrong of Achilles, are equally hateful to Zeus, the supreme governor. It is true that the reader has long since known the purpose of the highest God: he intends to give victory to the Trojans in order to destroy them; but first the Greek side is to be disciplined out of its wrong by the victory of Troy. At present, however, the equipoise is sustained, though in the following Book Zeus will weigh the Fates of the two armies, and that of Troy for the time will triumph. The equality is, hence, but temporary, a phase of the great struggle, the quivering point of supreme uncertainty, which has its counterpart in most wars and battles.

The connection with the preceding Book is direct, both in the outer circumstances and the inner motives. Hector arrives with Paris at the Trojan camp; the leader finds his people quite as they were when he left them to go to the city. Equally close is the connection in thought. In the preceding Book Pallas was not conciliated she cannot be. Accordingly, when the struggle opens anew she appears almost at the beginning to aid her side, the Greek. But Diomed the individual was conciliated with a Trojan hero, and will not fight him. The result is, Diomed passes decidedly into the background, and another hero, Ajax, is the central figure. Still, Diomed is not forgotten; he does no famous deed, but he makes a famous speech, which is implacable to excess; he will not now accept even Helen as a peace-offering from the Trojans. Still, he is not the former Diomed in action, whatever he may be as speech-maker.

There is also a general connection with the entire movement of