wholly to this earth as the theatre of its wild
drama; immortality was always its groundwork, and its last scene always
opened in the invisible world, where the saints were surrounded with
undying halos of glory, and from whence they watched over men with
increasing love, while in their midst reigned a gentle figure full of
grace and majesty, uniting, in a mysterious and ineffable manner, the
holy virginity and sacred maternity of woman; a gentle, humble being,
through whose innocent meekness the two worlds, finite and infinite, had
been forever linked in the person of the infant God, whom she forever
bore upon her virgin bosom. What a tender lesson for barbaric life!

We must also remember that these legends were eminently popular, that
they passed from mouth to mouth round the winter hearth, teaching the
young and soothing the children, like the cradle song of a mother,
pouring hope into the cell of the captive, teaching the virtuous
oppressed that a just God mercifully listened to all their secret sighs,
and, leading the poor to look beyond the squalid poverty which
surrounded them, pointed to them the legions of angels, which were
lovingly camped around them. It is impossible to overestimate the
blessed effects of such a literature, or to count the naive hearts which
it may have rescued from suicide and despair!

The spirit of the literature of the middle ages culminates in the
Christian poet, Dante. History, theology, politics, paganism, sweet and
melancholy elegies, flashes of fiery indignation, all men and all
generations, meet in his majestic epic. Yet the closest unity is
preserved through this astonishing range of subjects; one sublime idea
broods over its every line,--the idea of a God of perfect justice--of
undying love!

We cite, in corroboration, the following lines from this noble poet,
though a prose translation can do but little justice to the glowing
original:

'God is One in substance; Power, Wisdom, and Love assume in Him a
triple Personality, so that in all tongues singular and plural are
alike applicable to Him. He is spirit; he is the circle which
circumscribes everything and which nothing ever circumscribes;
immense, eternal, immutable, He is the Primal out of which all is
darkness. Unlimited by time, without laws save in His own will, in
the bosom of eternity, He, who is three in One, acts;--Power
executes what Wisdom proposes, and Infinite Love is fo