ersities, is probably a surprise to most people, but
serves to show how wide was the reading of this great scientist, was
also an attentive student of Dante, and has a passage with regard to
the Florentine poet's knowledge of science quite as striking as that
with regard to the great scholastic's excursions into the same field.
In his Cosmos he has the following tribute to Dante as a student of
nature and as a loving observer of natural phenomena:

"When the story of the Arabic, Greek or Roman dominion--or, I might
almost say, when the ancient world had passed away, we find in the
great and inspired founder of a new era, Dante Alighieri, occasional
manifestations of the deepest sensibility to the charms of the
terrestrial life of nature, whenever he abstracts himself from the
passionate and subjective control of that despondent mysticism which
constituted the general circle of his ideas."

With regard to the famous description of the river of light in the
thirtieth canto of the Paradiso, Humboldt declared that the picture
must have been suggested to Dante by the phosphorescence seen so
beautifully and so luxuriantly in the Adriatic Sea at times. The
passage itself is so beautiful and is so well worth the reading a
{356} second time, even for those who have read it before, that I give
it a place here, followed by Humboldt's comment.

I saw a glory like a stream flow by,
In brightness rushing, and on either shore
Were banks that with spring's wondrous hues might vie.
And from that river living sparks did soar,
And sank on all sides on the floweret's bloom.
Like precious rubies set in golden ore.
Then, as if drunk with all the rich perfume,
Back to the wondrous torrent did they roll,
And as one sank another filled its room.

Dean Plumptre says that Humboldt's suggestion with regard to this
description has not been found elsewhere, and as it adds to the
completeness of the idea conveyed by the figure, he gives it a place
in his studies and estimates of Dante. Humboldt said:

"It would almost seem as if this picture had its origin in the
poet's recollection of that peculiar and rare phosphorescent
condition of the ocean when luminous points appear to rise from the
breaking waves, and, spreading themselves over the surface of the
waters, convert the liquid plain into a moving sea of sparkling
stars."

It is with regard to the little things in life, particularly thos