The spirit of Dante, though intensely Italian, was also cosmopolitan. He loved his country with an ardent af fection, but he lived and breathed in an atmosphere far above his cotemporaries; and although born in the thirteenth, and flourishing in the beginning of the fourteenth century, he belonged not to one age, but to all time. He had in his nature and character so much of the VATES-the prophet poet-that he anticipated the future of his country, and influenced her destinies through every subsequent age, preserving in his immortal verse for posterity the knowledge of his own times, and transmitting to us a more correct conception of them than their own prolix and discordant annals have afforded. Though "his soul was like a star and dwelt apart," it shed its lustre on the scene above which it rose, and rendered attractive events which history overlooked, and which the pen of the mere historian could not have endowed with interest, or invested with importance.

The name of Dante is not only the most conspicuous in medieval history, but as a poet he takes rank among the foremost in any age or nation. Macaulay places him above all the ancient poets, except Homer. Many a name, illustrious during the middle ages, has been obscured by the lapse of time and the change of circumstances; but that of Dante still holds its place in the literary firmament, and shines with undiminished lustre. Of middle stature and grave deportment, his dress plain, and his manner at times a little absent and abstracted, he was endowed with extraordinary powers of mind; the mould in which he was cast was one of the choicest

that of sovereign princes, and their dominion operated as a blight on public and private virtue and happiness. The commandments of God were made void by the traditions of men; and the system of clerical celibacy and priestly absolution tended to undermine and deprave the morals of society; while the traffic in indulgences, introduced by Urban the Second in the eleventh century, under pretense of raising funds for rescuing the Holy Land from the infidel, gave direct encouragement to licentiousness and crime. These evils were aggra

vated by the violence of party-spirit, which appeared to rage without control. Every town and city was rent by the contending parties of Guelph and Ghibeline, and whenever either of these prevailed the other was driven into exile. The popes endeavored to maintain their political ascendency by encouraging the animosities of the two factions, and sometimes by inviting the assistance of foreign potentates. Thus Italy became the theatre of bloody and desolating wars; and the German emperor, the Frenchman, and the Spaniard, successively made her their prey. Unity, alone, was wanting, to make the Alps impassable to the invader, and to preserve Italian freedom from the yoke of the stranger; but the consummation of this obvious means of security was delayed for six hundred years by virulent hatreds, and by the rivalry and furious passions of contending republics which led them to sacrifice material prosperity, and civil and political freedom and welfare, to native tyrants and foreign invaders; thus preparing the way for ages of ignominy and bondage.

Yet these Italian states had been the birth-place and cradle of European

Wherein are cast the heroic and the free,
The beautiful, the brave."

The moral and political condition of Italy in Dante's time was very lamentable. Its Christianity had long been debased by error and superstition. From the Church the glory had departed, and the Ark of God was in captivity among its enemies. The pretended successors of St. Peter had risen from the condition of subjects to

sciences. We are more indebted to their example and influence than most persons are aware. When the rest of Europe was comparatively poor and barbarous, Italy was prosperous and civilized. The open country round each city was cultivated by an industrious peasantry, whose labor placed them in easy and often affluent circumstances. The citizen proprietors advanced them capital, and shared

majestic allegories of Dante, who, according to Sismondi, took for his model the most ancient and celebrated of them, the Romance of the Rose, which, however, he has infinitely surpassed.

DANTE was born at Florence, May ourteenth, 1265. His baptismal name was Durante, afterward abbreviated to Dante. His ancestry, connections, and the incidents of his life, are best gathered from his works. His grandfather, Cacciaguida D'Elisei, married a lady of the Aldighieri or Alighieri family of Ferrara, whose children assumed the arms and name of their

mother. Cacciaguida accompanied the Emperor Conrad the Third in his crusade to the Holy Land, was knighted for his valor, and died in battle against the Saracen Infidels, A.D. 1147. Hence the poet, in his Paradiso, exalts him to the rank of a martyr, and makes him relate his adventures and describe the condition of Florence, and the simple and primitive manner of its inhabitants, before the breaking out of the great feud between the Guelphs and Ghibelines. While Dante was yet a child, his father died and left him to the care of his mother, who, being wealthy and a woman of sense, gave him the best education that could be procured. One of his preceptors was Brunetto Latini, an eminent scholar and poet, who from the early indications of his pupil's genius, appears to have prognosticated his preeminence

and renown.

Dante relates his meeting with him

in the Shades below:

"A glorious port thou canst not miss, thy star So thou but follow,' he to me replied, 'If well I judged thee in the life more fair.'"

Dante's gratitude to his preceptor is shown in his reply:

"For in my memory fixed, now grieves my heart

The dear and good paternal image known
Of you on earth, where with a master's art
You taught me how eternity is won.
How dear I hold the lesson, while I live

'Tis fit should by my eloquence be shown." In the ninth year of his age, he first saw a young lady a few months older than himself, an event which left an indelible impression on his mind and

character. Such early attachments are often the purest, and the most lasting in their influence: how often has some object of boyish passion, removed by death, been enshrined in the memory, and visited the dreams to the love of human genius immortalized like end of life! But never was the early

Dante's. The vision of Beatrice Por

tarini, seen at a festival given by her father to the young people of the city, on May-day, 1274, never departed from him. In La Vita Nuova, the earliest with infinite delicacy, the incidents of of his known productions, he relates, that youthful passion which helped to stamp his destiny as a poet, and inspired his hymn of the eternal rest. As in the case of another great poetof this first and passionate love could one of our own country-the object not be his. Yet

"She was his life;

The ocean to the river of his thoughts."

health, she died at the age of twentyAfter several years of declining five; unconscious, probably, or but half-conscious of the interest which she had awakened in the breast of her youthful admirer, who has linked her of his great poem. To her he consename with his own in the immortality crated the earliest strains of his lyre; in his maturer age, when passing through the regions of blessedness, she is his chosen guide; and while he listens to celestial harmony, amidst the shining company of saints and angels, her presence heightens hea

ven.

In

Dante's youth was distinguished by a noble and contemplative disposition, and that enthusiasm for study which is the surest presage of distinction, every period of his life. Among his and which accompanied him through most intimate friends were some of the distinguished men of his timephilosophers, poets, and artists. the pursuit of wisdom, he not only studied in the famous universities of Padua and Bologna, but is also said. to have visited those of Paris and Oxford. He belonged to the Guelph party, which at that time ruled in Florence; and although not a warrior by profession, was in the battle of