CANTO II.

THE ARGUMENT.

A glorious light is seen in the distance moving over the sea, which on its near approach proves to be an Angel, steering the Ship of Souls, within which the shades are chanting In Exitu Israel. They disembark, and among them Dante recognises an old acquaintance, Casella, celebrated as a musician, who at his request sings a favorite lay, to which the shades listen enraptured; but Cato reappearing interrupts the song, reproves their delay, and drives them towards the Mount of Purgatory.

Now had the Sun to that horizon climb'd

With whose meridian circle cover'd quite
Fair Salem is, by that point most sublimed.1

And circling opposite to him the Night

Forth with the Balances from Ganges breaks,
And lets them drop when she has reach'd her height.2
Meanwhile in beautiful Aurora's cheeks

The white and vermeil, where I was that day,
Through ripening age an orange hue partakes.

1 Jerusalem being the supposed centre of the dry land, and Dante being now at its antipodes, the apex of the dome formed by that hemisphere of the heaven opposite to him, would be immediately above the Holy City.

2 The Sun, while rising on the Poets, is setting at Jerusalem, where consequently Night is coming forth from the East; and as the Sun is in Aries, the constellation Libra must on that meridian be rising, and, of course, will at midnight have passed it, and be declining towards the West.

Still by the ocean-shore we made our stay,

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Like those who on some tedious journey pore, Whose thoughts fly swiftly though their limbs delay. When, lo! as when the night is nearly o'er,

Through the dense vapour Mars with reddening beam Sinks in the west above the ocean floor

So shone (may I again behold its gleam)

r;

A light that o'er the sea so swiftly flew,
No motion else to equal that would seem :
From which when I again mine eyes withdrew,

To ask my guide, and look'd again, 'twas grown
More luminous and larger to my view.

On either side of it then was there shown

An unknown shape of brightness to my ken;
And from beneath it by degrees was thrown
Another. Yet my leader spake not, when
The first-seen brightness open'd wings; and he
The angelic Pilot recognising then,1

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Cried out, "Fall down, fall down, and bend thy knee :2
Behold God's angel; raise thy folded hands;
Now such divine officials thou shalt see.

Lo, how he scorns what human skill demands:

Darkness ere Day's mid course, and morning light
More orient in yon western cloud that draws

O'er the blue firmament a radiant white,

And slow descends, with something heavenly fraught.
I descry,

From yonder blazing cloud that veils the hill,

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One of the heavenly host."-Paradise Lost, xi. 203-230. 2 "A voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels," against which St. Paul had given a distinct warning, Col. ii. 18, had, long before Dante's time, become the sin and folly of the great mass of professing Christians, both clergy and laity.

An oar he needs not, spreads no sail in air

Save his own wings-between such distant strands. See how toward heaven upraised he spreads them there, Fanning the air with his eternal plumes,

Which ne'er fall off nor change like human hair."
Then, as yet near and nearer toward us looms
The feather'd form divine, it brighten'd more,
Dazzling whoe'er to look thereon presumes.
But I bent downward and he came to shore,

In vessel swift and trim, which made a swoop,
Nor gulp'd the wave she lightly bounded o'er,
With her celestial pilot on the poop.

His looks a blest one legibly proclaim.

Within, more than a hundred spirits droop,
Chanting, "When Israel out of Egypt came."
To sing it with one voice they all combine,
And all that's written of that Psalm the same.1
Then of the Cross he made the holy sign;2

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1 Psalm cxiv. The allegorical sense is obvious. They had sailed from the Tiber, and crossed the sea under the conduct of an angel, in their escape from "the great city which spiritually is called Egypt."-Rev. xi. 8. The bard (vates as well as poeta) prefigures here the escape of Christendom from Roman bondage. Further, in his letter to Can Grande, on the meaning of this passage, he says: "If we look into the moral sense, it signifies to us the conversion of the soul from the grief and misery of sin to a state of grace; if the anagogical, it signifies the escape of a holy soul from the servitude of this corruption to the liberty of eternal glory."

2 The origin of this custom here claims our attention. Barnabas, in speaking of the Old Testament types, in which, as it is well known, he was a little fanciful, tells us that Moses, when fighting against Amelek (Exod. vii. 12), stretched out his hands, "that he might make a type of the cross (TUπov σravpov);" which some have rendered "a sign of the cross." In Ezekiel ix. the

And all at once they leap'd forth on the strand: 50

Swift as he came then went the form divine.

The crowd that stay'd there, strangers in that land
Appear'd, intently gazing round; like one
Who novel objects tries to understand.
In all directions now the risen sun

Shot forth the day, and with his arrows bright
From the mid heavens forced Capricorn to run;1
When the new comers toward us raised their sight,
And ask'd that we would tell them, if we knew,
The way for them to reach the mountain's height. 60
And Virgil answer'd, "You suppose us two,
Perchance, acquainted with this wild resort:
But we are strangers here, as well as you.
The time we came before you was but short,

By another way, so rough and full of bale,

man clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side, is commanded to go through Jerusalem, and set a mark (Tau) on the foreheads of those who mourned the sins of their country; and all who had not this mark were devoted to destruction. Tau is the name of the Hebrew letter answering to our T. It is also the name of an object, as all the Hebrew letters are, and signifies a Cross, to the figure of which the old Hebrew or Samaritan Tau bears a rude resemblance. In the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla, forged about the beginning of the second century, and subsequently interpolated, a miraculous deliverance is said to have been wrought by "making the sign of the cross." But the earliest unambiguous and unquestionable allusion to the practice is that by Tertullian, in his book De coroná militis (A.D. 207— 210), who says, "We often sign ourselves with the sign of the cross. For this custom he pleads tradition, but admits that it is without any warrant from Holy Scripture.

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"And now went forth the Morn, array'd in gold

Empyreal, from before her vanish'd night,

Shot through with orient beams."-Par. Lost, vi. 12—14.

That now for us to mount will seem but sport." The souls, who by my breathing did not fail

To be aware that I was yet alive,

Through their astonishment thereat grew pale.
And as a messenger who doth arrive

With olive-branch draws men the news to hear,
And none through fear of trampling fails to strive,
Even so stood all those fortunate spirits there
With eager scrutiny my face to view,
Forgetting to press on to be made fair.1
I saw one in advance who towards me drew,
With such entire affection to embrace,
That I towards him was moved the like to do.
O shadows vain! mere semblances we chase!
Thrice round him I my ready arms elance,
Which thrice returning, on my breast I place.2
Wonder, I think, would paint my countenance,

For then the shadow smiled and shrunk away;
And following after, onward I advance.
Then with soft voice he bade me still delay;
Whence who he was I knew, and pray'd that now
To talk with me a little while he'd stay.
"Now freed," he said, "that love I still avow
Which in a mortal frame I had for thee.

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80

I therefore stay; but here why wanderest thou ?" 90 "Casella mine," I said, "I am to be

1 That is, to be purified.

2 Virgil, describing his meeting in Hades the Shade of his departed wife Creusa, says :—

Three times around her neck to throw mine arms I endeavoured,
Three times in vain my hands laid hold of the phantom,
Empty as the light winds, and like a dream in fleetness.”.

Eneid. ii. 792.

A distinguished Florentine musician, who had set many of