owned in its fullness in
this world.

And Dante, put by Raphael without protest from the Church Militant,
among the Doctors of the Faith, glorifies Trajan among the Saved and
opens Heaven to Cato. This shows, by the way, the falsity of the
Voltairean _mauvais mot_, that all the people worth meeting are in Hell!
And Dante sees Constantine in Heaven, although he thinks that this
Emperor's donation of territory was an evil gift. Dante, who, by the
way, was nearer to the old records and this tradition of the older time,
is a witness against Lord Bryce's assertion that the documents of
Constantine's donation were mediaeval forgeries. Dante believed, however,
that the donation was invalid, because the successor of St. Peter, being
of the spirit, could not accept temporal power. This he asserts in his
"De Monarchia," which was for a time on the "Index." Times have changed,
and "De Monarchia" and Milton's "Paradise Lost" are no longer in the
"Index," though Balzac and Dumas, in French, are. But many of the
Faithful in the United States console themselves by assuming that, as in
the case of Dr. Zahm's "Religion and Science," this the method of the
Sacred Congregation is not without its distinctions. Dr. Zahm's book,
suppressed in Italian, received the proper "imprimatur" in English! So
may "The Three Musketeers" and may "Monte Cristo" be regarded as coming
under the ban in the original, but as tolerated in the translation?

Dante's bitterness against certain Popes made no rift in his creed, nor
does it seem to have made him less respected by the Roman Court. There
is in the "Paradiso" that great passage on the poet's faith--

_Cos[`i] spir[`o] di quell' amore acceso;
indi soggiunse: "Assai bene [`e] trascorsa
d'esta moneta gi[`a] la lega e il peso;
ma dimmi se tu l' hai nella tua borsa."
ed' io: "Si, l'ho, si lucida e si tonda,
che nel suo conio nulla mi s' inforsa."_

_Appresso usci della luce profonda,
che li splendeva; "Questa cara gioia,
sopra la quale ogni virt[`u] si fonda,
onde ti venne?" Ed io: "La larga ploia
dello Spirito Santo, ch' [`e] diffusa
in su le vecchie e in su le nuove cuoia,_

_[`E] sillogismo, che la mia ha conchiusa
acutamente si, che in verso d' ella
ogni dimostrazion mi pare ottusa."_

If the reading of the "Paradiso" turns one to other books, so much the
better. Aristotle is worth while; he holds the germ of what i