nt around her, each having its own distinct splendour
and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and
she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the eyes of all
the blessed.

At Mary's feet was sitting Eve, beautiful--she that opened the wound
which Mary closed; and at the feet of Eve was Rachel, with Beatrice; and
at the feet of Rachel was Sarah, and then Judith, then Rebecca, then
Ruth, ancestress of him out of whose penitence came the song of the
Miserere;[55] and so other Hebrew women, down all the gradations of the
flower, dividing, by the line which they made, the Christians who lived
before Christ from those who lived after; a line which, on the opposite
side of the rose, was answered by a similar one of Founders of the
Church, at the top of whom was John the Baptist. The rose also was
divided horizontally by a step which projected beyond the others, and
underneath which, known by the childishness of their looks and voices,
were the souls of such as were too young to have attained Heaven by
assistance of good works.

St. Bernard then directed his companion to look again at the Virgin, and
gather from her countenance the power of beholding the face of Christ as
God. Her aspect was flooded with gladness from the spirits around her;
while the angel who had descended to her on earth now hailed her above
with "Ave, Maria!" singing till the whole host of Heaven joined in
the song. St. Bernard then prayed to her for help to his companion's
eyesight. Beatrice, with others of the blest, was seen joining in the
prayer, their hands stretched upwards; and the Virgin, after benignly
looking on the petitioners, gazed upwards herself, shewing the way with
her own eyes to the still greater vision. Dante then looked also, and
beheld what he had no words to speak, or memory to endure.

He awoke as from a dream, retaining only a sense of sweetness that ever
trickled to his heart.

Earnestly praying afterwards, however, that grace might be so far
vouchsafed to a portion of his recollection, as to enable him to convey
to his fellow-creatures one smallest glimpse of the glory of what he
saw, his ardour was so emboldened by help of the very mystery at whose
sight he must have perished had he faltered, that his eyes, unblasted,
attained to a perception of the Sum of Infinitude. He beheld,
concentrated in one spot--written in one volume of Love--all which is
diffused, and can become the subject o