h of the Inquisition and the mendicant
orders,--the wars against the Albigenses, the Pagans of the East, and
the unfortunate princes of the house of Swabia, agitated Italy during
the two following generations. In this point Dante was completely
under the influence of his age. He was a man of a turbid and melancholy
spirit. In early youth he had entertained a strong and unfortunate
passion, which, long after the death of her whom he loved, continued to
haunt him. Dissipation, ambition, misfortunes had not effaced it. He was
not only a sincere, but a passionate, believer. The crimes and abuses
of the Church of Rome were indeed loathsome to him; but to all its
doctrines and all its rites he adhered with enthusiastic fondness and
veneration; and, at length, driven from his native country, reduced to
a situation the most painful to a man of his disposition, condemned to
learn by experience that no food is so bitter as the bread of dependence

("Tu proverai si come sa di sale
Lo pane altrui, e come e duro calle
Lo scendere e'l sa'ir per l'altrui scale."
Paradiso, canto xvii.),

and no ascent so painful as the staircase of a patron,--his wounded
spirit took refuge in visionary devotion. Beatrice, the unforgotten
object of his early tenderness, was invested by his imagination with
glorious and mysterious attributes; she was enthroned among the highest
of the celestial hierarchy: Almighty Wisdom had assigned to her the care
of the sinful and unhappy wanderer who had loved her with such a perfect
love. ("L'amico mio, e non della ventura." Inferno, canto ii.) By a
confusion, like that which often takes place in dreams, he has sometimes
lost sight of her human nature, and even of her personal existence, and
seems to consider her as one of the attributes of the Deity.

But those religious hopes which had released the mind of the sublime
enthusiast from the terrors of death had not rendered his speculations
on human life more cheerful. This is an inconsistency which may often be
observed in men of a similar temperament. He hoped for happiness beyond
the grave: but he felt none on earth. It is from this cause, more than
from any other, that his description of Heaven is so far inferior to the
Hell or the Purgatory. With the passions and miseries of the suffering
spirits he feels a strong sympathy. But among the beatified he appears
as one who has nothing in common with them,--as one who is incapable of
comprehend