We are left to surmise when and for what purpose these lines were written, whether as a relief from the author's own terrible thoughts of death, perpetuated in that fearful hymn,—
"Oravi me terrore pulsas, vitro dies ultima;"
or as a consolation to his sisters, Rodelinda and Sufficia, when mourning for their husbands;[1] or as supplemental to the benedictory letter addressed to a sick friend, shortly expecting the hour of his soul's departure,[2] the substance of which forms now the Commendatory Prayer used for the Dying by the Church of Rome; or for the encouragement of the Countess Blanche, devoting herself to convent life;[3] or when he was himself returning to the monastic seclusion, from which he had been reluctantly dragged to his Episcopate, and when leaving Hildebrand "to complete the subdual of the world without," he retired to subdue it, "with more utter aversion, with more concentred determination, within himself."[4]
The Cardinal's description of Paradise may, perhaps, in one or two places, be open to Daniel's objection of being "nimis suavis;" but it will be, upon the whole, pronounced by all readers to be not only grand in style, but in its matter solemnly affecting, beautiful, and true. The unseen, unheard, inconceivable joys can be faintly expressed by the reproduction in one of the three most glorious revelations of Scripture—The Garden of Eden, the Holy Land with its Temple, the Church of Christ; the three most beautiful sights of earth—rivers, cities, and mountains; and the three most precious things beneath the earth—gold, crystal, jewels. There may be also a slight admixture here of Gentile imagery, reminding us of the "Sedes quietæ" of Homer and Lucretius—the Hyperborean felicities of Pindar—the Elysium of Virgil; but what is this but the reabsorption of dispersed
