traditions to the holy source from which they flowed? Better far than the triple cord of mingled mythology, scholasticism, and Scripture with which Dante seeks to lift our thoughts to heaven. Damiani justly observes, in the passage of his prose works, from which I have made several extracts already, that "there is more in the thing itself than the mind can conceive, yet more in the mind conceived than can by any language be expressed." With this remark we may well close our prefatory introduction to such a subject, and with the aposiopesis with which Hildebert so appropriately breaks off his description of the Heavenly Jerusalem:—
"Feasts how bright her Saints are keeping,
Without wasting, without weeping;
Heart to heart what love entwining,
With what stones the City shining;
Jacinth or chalcedon be it,
They shall know who live to see it."
