of the first Thought of men,--the
chief recognized virtue, Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not
for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is here, if
in that one respect only--!

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very
strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's writing;
yet in truth it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing
of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that
metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,--how little
of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past inventive men work
there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the
spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here, in
everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful,
are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had
gone before him. Precious they; but also is not he precious? Much, had
not he spoken, would have been dumb; not dead, yet living voiceless.

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at once of one
of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe
had hitherto realized for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is
another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than "Bastard
Christianism" half-articulately spoken in the Arab Desert, seven hundred
years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among men, is
sung, and emblemed forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. In the
one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess it? As I
calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For the
thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs
altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer is of the
day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in swift endless
changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. True
souls, in all generations of the world, who look on this Dante, will
find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes
and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that
this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in Saint Helena is charmed with
the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a
vesture the most diverse from ours, does yet, because he speaks from the
heart of man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole secret of
continuing