s of
Paradise and guided them about the place, explaining its art, ethics and
economics, and pointing out the notables.

Dante placed in Paradise all those who had befriended him most and
praised his poems. People he did not like he deposited in Hell, for
Dante was human. That is what Hell is for--a place to put people who
disagree with us.

Milton was profoundly influenced by Dante, and in fact was very much
like him, save that, though he had the felicity to be legally married
three times, yet there is no sign of passionate love in his life. Henley
says that without Dante we should have had no Milton, and how much Dante
and Milton have influenced the popular conception of the Christian
religion, no man can say. Even as conservative a man as Archdeacon
Farrar, in one of his Clark lectures, said, "Our orthodox faith seems to
trace a genesis to the genius of Dante, with Saint Paul and Jesus as
secondary or contributing influences."

After five years' wandering, Dante was notified that he could return to
Florence on making due apology to the reigning powers and walking in the
procession of humble transgressors.

The letter he wrote in reply is still in existence. He scorned pardon,
since he had been guilty of no offense, and he would return with honor
or not at all.

This letter secured him a second indictment, wherein it was provided
that he should be burned alive if he set foot inside the republic.

This sentence was not revoked until Fourteen Hundred Ninety-four, and as
Dante had then been dead more than a hundred years, it was of small
avail on earth. The plan, however, of pardoning dead men was so that
their souls could be gotten out of Purgatory legally, the idea being
that man's law and justice were closely woven with the Law of God, and
that God punished offenses against the State, just as He would offenses
against the Church. Hence it was necessary for the State and Church to
quash their indictment before God could do the same.

People who think that governments and religious denominations are
divine institutions will see the consistency and necessity of Lorenzo de
Medici and Pope Alexander the Fourth combining and issuing a pardon in
Dante's favor one hundred seventy years after his death. He surely had
been in Purgatory long enough.

Dante died at Ravenna in Thirteen Hundred Twenty-one, aged fifty-six
years. It seems that he had gone there to see his daughter, Beatrice,
who was in a nunnery just outsid