in the quiet of universal peace, all the historians and illustrious poets testify; . . . and Paul calls that most happy state the fulness of days. Certainly the age and its circumstances were so arranged that no mystery of our happiness should be wanting to the world. But in what fashion the world has been moved from that time to this, so that the seamless vesture has been torn by the nails of avarice, we have read, and God grant that we could be beyond reach of seeing. O human race! how many tempests, what ruin and wrong, art thou constrained to endure, while thou makest of thyself a beast with many heads!"
These three works, remarkable in their way, and full of matter interesting to the student, are separated in the distinctest manner, and placed by their very nature on an entirely different level from that occupied by the great poem of Dante. The 'Divine Comedy' is for all time: it is crammed full of the minutest local allusions, and crowded with names and incidents which have ceased, except as mentioned there, to interest any living creature; but nevertheless it is as living, as powerful, as comprehensible, as when it was written—a record of human existence, passion, sorrow, pity, and love, which no destruction now could tear out of the memory of men—a portion of our universal inheritance. Could Italy, with all its glories, be swept away, as the middle ages have passed away, with all their struggles and splendour, Dante would remain as great as ever, notwithstanding that he is Italian and medieval in every feature of his genius; and so long as human nature remains the thing it is, steadily triumphant in character and emotion over all the preaching of developments, no antiquity will make the great poet old. But the 'Convito' and the 'Monarchia' are archaeological relics, affecting re-
