d wood. Dante, the type of humanity, is unable
to ascend the Hill of the Lord, as we said before, because his way is
barred successively by a leopard, a lion and a wolf, representing the
passions of life. Virgil (Reason), sent by Beatrice (Revelation), offers
to conduct the poet by another road. It is a way which leads through
Hell and Purgatory. Through the heavens Beatrice herself will be the
guide. Descending through the earth the two poets come to the Vestibule
of Hell. On the gate appears this inscription:

"Through me you pass into the city of woe
Through me you pass into eternal pain
Through me among the people lost for aye
Justice, the founder of my fabric, moved
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest wisdom and primeval Love
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

It may be said in passing that in these nine lines Dante attains an
effect for which Milton, with all his heavy description of the gateway
of Hell, labors in vain. Contrast with the Florentine's the words of the
author of Paradise Lost:

"Hell bounds high reaching to the horrid roof
And thrice three fold the gates: three folds were brass,
Three iron, three of adamantine rock.
Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire,
Yet unconsumed. Before the gate there sat
On either side a formidable shape," etc.

Not by gigantic images which only astonish the reader, but by words
which burn into the brain and leave him dismayed, does our poet drive
home his thought.

Passing through a crowd of neutrals the poets come to the river Acheron,
where assemble those who die in mortal sin, to be ferried over by the
demon Charon. He refuses passage to Dante: "By other ways, by other
ferries, shalt thou pass over, a lighter boat must carry thee." (Inf.,
III, 91.) An earthquake occurs, accompanied with wind and lightning, and
Dante falls into a state of insensibility. Upon coming to consciousness
he finds himself on the brink of the Abyss, whence the poets enter
Limbo. Here Christ descended, Virgil says, and "drew from us the shade
of our first parent, of Abel, his son; that of Noah, of Moses, the
lawgiver, the obedient; patriarch Abraham and King David; Israel, with
his father, and with his sons and with Rachel, for whom he wrought much,
and many others and made them blessed." (Inf., IV, 55.)

In the second circle, where carnal sinners are punishe