spue thee out of my mouth (1).”

The principle, on which it is our duty to act, is the same by whatever phrase it may be designated, whether by enlightened self-love, or charity: it is an active persuasion that our least valuable quality is our individuality that, like the minor wheels

of a watch, we should be most prized not for our own insignificant worth, but for our contributing towards an excellent aggregate- -and, in short, that we are all parts of one whole and tend to one end; that no individual advantage should be put in competition with the universal good, and that, in fact, such mere individual advantages are always a fallacy, from their being either very instable or quite imaginary: it is an habitual preference of general to particular interests, of permanent to temporary, from a conviction that in reality the general and particular interests must be the same in spite of appearances, and that none who endeavour to advance the mighty plan of Providence can eventually be losers; since their account shall be equitably wound up, probably even in this life (if not exteriorly, yet interiorly by the remuneration of conscience); but that in case it be not so here, it must be so some way or other hereafter. It is this principle which produces self-devotedness, the virtuous sentiment

(1) Rev. C. 111. v. 15–6

action that has ever been executed; while its opposite vice, selfishness, is, I repeat, the moral and political sin beyond redemption. By others this may be discussed theoretically and quietly in their closets: but our Dante had it practically in view from his first entrance into public life to his decease; and that base cowardice of preferring private security to the national felicity, which he severely stigmatised in the present Canto brought Florence during his own career to much shame and anguish, and in process of time to slavery. Freedom indeed knows no other such bane. We rail at parties, (and degenerated into such sanguinary factions as the Guelphs and Ghibellines they certainly are odious, though even they are perhaps less so, than the ungenerous torpor which has replaced them in Italy) yet are parties the very life-spring of a popular government. A partisan may be a sterling patriot: and he should be judged less on a minute dissection of his votes, than on the avowed system of his party. Such a man will ponder long before he espouses any; and, on the recurrence of some paramount question involving the existence of the State, will put his judgment to a new trial: but he will not be unsteady, nor, under the pretence of independence, discover an indifference more dangerous than the machinations of traitors and parasites; and, estimating too highly for trifling the sanctity

nor considerations, will occasionally through deference to his associates change his own opinion, and even sometimes act against it, rather than desert those on whom (although they may decide erroneously on certain points) he believes that his country may, in the main, best rely. These sentiments were so rooted in the breast of our philosophical poet, that he could not restrain himself from venting them in the very place where it was most dangerous, as well as most useless to do so, in the papal court. It was during one of his journeys through France that visiting Clement V. at Avignon and being permitted to be present at a consistory, he felt so indignant at the craft and uu-citizenlike tergiversation of the Cardinals, that, rising he impetuously apostrophised them in the verses which we are commenting, and left the city (1).

up,

(1) Bib. Ricc. M. S. Cod. 1016. It was this authority which enabled me (Hell, Commeat, Canto 1. p. 48. ) to fix the date of his journey into France. For Clement V. died in April 1314; so it must have preceded that; and on the other hand, a letter of Dante's shows he had not yet left Venice on the thirtieth of March 1313; it must then have been between these periods: for Clement's pontificate began subsequently to Dante's exile in 1302, from which to his letter in 1313, we trace him too rapidly up and down Italy to allow time for any long journey beyond the Alps. That he made one visit to France during his exile is then sure, and that it was on the same occasion be went into England is probable; but not certain, for he was in France previous to his exile and in the quality of Florentine ambassador. That he filled that embassy is asserted by too good an authority to adinit of doubt; and Manetti assures us that when he went there during

Although Milton did not employ the notion of angels that were neuter in the celestial war, I cannot think that Dante was wrong in availing himself of what was then a vulgar credence built on no less an authority than that of the ingenious and learned, but whimsical Origen. The summary of his doctrine is, that of the angels who neither joined God nor Lucifer there are three divisions

one inhabiting the stormy air, another the hellish vestibule, and the third an outskirt of Paradise. These last, he says, come down from their station and return to it successively, until the Creator has finally determined on their eternal lot; and are indeed our souls that are employed to animate our bodies for a while, and ascend back into Paradise when our bodies die (1). This third position of Origen's was condemned by a

his exile it was in no public capacity, but solely for the purpose of study-studiorum dumtaxat gratia. Bib. Laurenziana. Plut. LXIII,

Cod. 30.

(1) As for the bad Angels who inhabit the foggy air - εν τω παχει τούτῳ καὶ περιγείῳ αέρι - be describes them as very vampires, living on blood and greasy fumes, to catch at which they lurk about the earth; for these noxious substances are the natural aliments without which, they could not subsist - καταλληλων τροφων τοις σωμασιν auTWY and even his commentator and critic, S. Jerome, is of a similar opinion as to their feeding on blood and offal —pasci et saginari cruore. Eto Mapтupiov. Par. 45. Aristophanes has no better burlesque on Platonism than these unintentional ones.

I; Dut both the former he does, (the second on the present occasion, and the first hereafter (2)) because neither of them were ever declared heterodox, but were followed by many esteemed ancient Divines; although I understand they are not fashionable among modern ones, but have been generally superseded by the opinion of S. Thomas Aquinas, who consigns all the unfaithful spirits without exception to the same fate as their leader, Satan (3). If the destinies of those aerial creatures be representative of such as await ourselves, if Michael and his saints bear resemblance both in conduct and its reward to the followers of virtue, and the guilty be realizations of Satan and Belzebub, it appears to me that the imagining of an intermediate class whose only allegiance was not to rebel' and who are objects of scorn both to heaven and to hell, was to give no unnatural type of those ignominious mortals, who are so poisonous to society and so hateful to their Maker.

I follow the interpretation of Monti and Biagio li (4) that those despicable spirits were not

(1) That of Constantinople, in 553. — Gibbon. Decline and Fall. vol. vin. p. 327. — Andrès. Letteratura. vol. vi. p. 35.

(2) Purg. Canto v.

(3) D. Tom. Aquiui. Sen. p. 2. dis. 3. and 4.

(4) Questa spiegazione si manifesta pel semplice costrutto regolare