an abstract quality. There is, however, a second question, when this is disposed of, which has excited many minds, and that is, whether the love of Dante for Beatrice was the mild worship of a Platonic affection, or the hotter and less reasonable love which in its force of passion appropriates to itself exclusively that divine name. Upon this subject almost every reader will form his own conclusion. The poet himself has so curiously combined the divers elements of the tale, mixing the artificial with the artless, the visionary with the real, and even throwing in here and there a suggestion of allegorical meaning, that it becomes difficult to claim any certainty for the impression made upon our mind, as against the impression made upon another, which may be entirely opposite. Whether it is the intention of the young lover to make us more sensible of the supreme elevation of his lady by keeping her purposely out of our reach, so that no profane fancy might guess at the state of her affections, or be able to discover whether she ever stooped from these ethereal heights to repay him so much as by a thought; or whether it is but the subliming influence of the age which received as a solemn doctrine that canon of chivalry by which the respectful adoration of a lady was made necessary to all true knighthood and manhood; or, finally, whether the real facts of the case are simply represented through the wonderful haze, dimness, and brightness of the scene,—it is difficult to tell. Our own opinion inclines towards the latter theory. In no other work that we can recall has the passion of love, which trembles in every word, ever been represented as so entirely separate from its object. The love of Dante lives upon no interchange of feeling, no meetings, no glances, no close con-
