like all other immortal poems, it is a pure creation of genius. It sprang from the deep fountains of Dante's own heart, and is hence the best history not only of his genius, but of his life. We see more of Dante in the Commedia than in all that has ever been written respecting him. It is truly the development of his Vita Nuova, or New Life. Through all the gloom of the Inferno, as well as the glory of the Paradiso, we behold that sinful, suffering spirit passing on to the full perfection of its being and blessedness. To this we find an affecting allusion in the thirtieth canto of the Purgatorio, where Beatrice, now to be regarded not as an earthborn beauty, but as the glorified symbol of truth and purity, is represented as saying:

"In his new life this man was such that he
Might in himself have wondrously displayed
All noble virtues in supreme degree.
But all the kindlier strength is in the soil,
So do ill seed and lack of culture breed
More noxious growth and ranker wilderness.
I for some term sustained him with my looks;
To him unveiling my young eyes, I led
His steps with mine along the path of right;
Yet soon as I the threshhold gained of this,
My second age, and laid life's vesture down,
He turned from me and gave himself to others.
When I from carnal had to spirit risen,
And beauty and virtue in me grew divine,
I was less dear to him and less esteemed;
And into devious paths he turned his steps,
Pursuing still false images of good,
That make no promise perfect to the hope.
Nor aught availed it, I for him besought
High inspirations, with the which in dreams,
And otherwise, I strove to lead him back;
So little warmed his bosom to my call,
To such vile depths he fell, that all device
Had failed for his salvation, save to show
The children of perdition to his eyes."

In embodying this great fact or idea, Dante chose such forms and imagery as were familiar to him; derived partly from men and books, from the spirit and opinions of the age, and partly from the natural workings of his own mind, fusing its materials and bringing them into new and unheard-of shapes. Thus his theology and metaphysics are those of the times in which he lived, or which immediately preceded him. Much of his hell, something also of his heaven, and certainly all of his purgatory, are the figments of superstition, and monkery; but the great indwelling spirit, the genius of the whole, which gleams through these fantastic shapes, or rather informs them with living energy and splendor, is the unborrowed inspiration of his own mighty intellect, touched with the finger of the Almighty.

On this ground there may be something in the idea of Sismondi (Literature du Midi, vol 1, p. 356), who refers to the monkish pageants and plays sometimes enacted in the age of Dante, to represent the punishments of hell, as having suggested the form of the Inferno. He says that on more than one occasion such an exhibition, in dramatic form was made at Florence, in the dry bed of the Arno, with all the varied torments which the imagination of the monks had called up, rivers of boiling pitch, gulfs of fire, mountains of ice and horned serpents-all which were brought to act upon real persons (heretics of course) who by their horrible shrieks, groans and howlings, made the illusion complete. It has been remarked, however, whether this suggested the Inferno, or the Inferno, this; for the one is just as probable as the other. At all events the minds of men, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were familiar enough with such ideas. The monkish preachers of that day tasked their imagination for the production of all sorts of horrors to frighten the people into obedience. Religion, enshrining a few grand elements preserved from antiquity, was gross in its character, and often brutal, if not demoniac in its manifestations." In the age of Dante," says Mariotti (“Italy Past and Present,") "praying and fighting went side by side. The Ark of the Covenant rose in the midst of martial encampments. The priesthood of Christ gloried in the name of church militant. The bishop said mass in his coat of arms, and rival fraternities knocked each other down with their crucifixes. The whole system of faith and worship was made to fit an age of violence. Christianity ruled by terror. Religion was then indeed the fear of God. Fear of the devil had been a more appropriate expression. The most egregious follies, and often the most fearful licentiousness and cruelty were mingled with intense bigotry and self-sacrificing penance. Fire and sword were the weapons of the church. The wasting of heretics under the names of Paterini and Cathari, the Puritans and Dissenters of their age had become an almost daily ceremony."

That the stern genius of Dante was imbued with something of this gross and stern asceticism, cannot be doubted. At all events it must be obvious to every one that he employed its more striking forms and expressions to reveal the daring thoughts of his deep and gloomy genius. But all the while we can discern his better nature struggling through the fire and smoke, and finally breaking away from the whole, and ascending, like a creature of heaven winged with sunbeams, to the fountain of eternal day.

But the acute Villemain, in his "Cours de Litterature Francaise," gives a better account of what may be called the formal origin of Dante's Inferno than the one suggested by Sismondi. "One day," says he, "long before the epoch of Dante, in the little city of Arezzo, the Pope Nicholas second, being present, a cardinal ascended the pulpit and preached. This cardinal was then

fifty years of age; he was small of stature; his eyes were sparkling and animated by an ardent and sombre fire, which made sinners tremble; his hair still black, gave to his countenance, already aged, something more manly and harsh. His words were revered by the people. He was deemed a holy man, and all the bishops of Italy trembled before his power. This was Gregory seventh, yet now only Archdeacon Hildebrand."

But why go back so far, enquires Villermain, for the inspiration of Dante. Because a man of genius having preached such a thing as the Inferno, it must have entered the popular mind, and repeated, amplified and exaggerated, gone down to posterity a vast legend, which another man of genius afterwards transformed into the highest poetry. Gregory, indeed cared nothing for the poetry, but he wished to subdue incorrigible offenders and fix an indelible stigma upon the Germans, whom he hated. Listen to him.

"A certain German Count," said he, "died about ten years ago. After his death a holy man descended in spirit into the infernal regions, and there saw the abovementioned Count placed upon the highest step of a ladder. He affirmed that this ladder seemed to rise uninjured amid the roaring and eddying flames of the avenging fire, and to have been placed there to receive all the descendants of that race of counts. Beyond, a black chaos, a frightful abyss extended infinitely and plunged into the infernal depths, whence issued this immense ladder. This was the order established there among those who succeeded each other: the last comer took the highest step of the ladder, and all the others descended each one step towards the abyss. The men of this family coming after him were successively arranged upon the ladder, and by an inevitable law, went one after another to the bottom of the abyss.

The holy man who witnessed these things inquired the cause of this damnation, and why the Count, his contemporary, reputed to be an upright and worthy man, a rare circumstance among persons of that class, was thus severely punished. On account of a domain of the church at Metz, which one of his ancestors, of whom he is the tenth heir, had wrested from the blessed Stephen, all these have been devoted to the same punishment; and as the same sin of avarice had united them in the same crime, so the same punishment has united them in the fires of hell."'

Here we have the idea of the ten degrees or circles of the Inferno, which issuing from "that terrible mouth," which made kings tremble, might have floated about in the terrified visions of the multitude, until arrested by the glowing mind of Dante, was finally set in the framework of his immortal verse.

But speculations of this sort are more curious than profitable, except as illustrating the spirit of the age, and the possible methods of genius; for while Dante derived his materials from all sources, he alone possessed the power to construct them into that temple of

adamant, which is yet invested with all the gloom and glory of the middle ages; or to quote his own words,

"the sacred song which heaven and earth

Have lent a hand to frame-which

Many a year hath kept me lean with thought."

In a word, the Divina Commedia, is one of those old Gothic edifices of the dark ages, with its many chambered cells, and even dungeons, its dim aisles and massive towers, fretted ornaments, old tombs and blazing altars, illumined by the rays of the setting sun, and echoing the soft tones of the vesper bells, a thing at once of dread and beauty, of stern asceticism and celestial devotion. In that old temple, " that great supernatural world cathedral," a modern, and a Protestant even, may linger in hallowed worship. There his spirit, subdued by solemn thought, may rise to the home of glory beyond the spheres, where the good of all creeds finally mingle; and if, by the grace of God, he should himself finally reach "the highest heaven of uncreated light," he will not be much surprised if, notwithstanding all the errors and imperfections of Dante, he should meet there the glorified Florentine. Would to heaven that in these days of skepticism and pride, of hollow religion and lofty pretension, when we scarce believe in heaven, to say nothing of hell, we had one half the clear vision, the steady faith, and the all-conquering love of the immortal poet. With our better views and softer piety, we might then set our foot upon the world, mount into the clear empyrean, and bathe our spirits in the very light of the eternal Sun.

ARTICLE III.

OLD AND NEW SCHOOL PRESBYTERIANISM.

By REV. SAMUEL. T. SPEAR, Brooklyn, N. Y.

Differences between Old and New School Presbyterians. By Rev. Lewis Cheeseman: Rochester: Published by Erastus Darrow.

(Continued from page 41.)

THE Eighth Chapter of the "Differences," contains the following table of contents: "Tendencies of the new divinity-The new divinity rests upon one, or, at most, two assumptions, both of which are false-Tends to infidelity." This does not present a very

lucid idea of what the author intends to accomplish. The main purpose, however, of this chapter, is to trace the "New School" heresies back to their "fountain," or source. In the estimation of the author, these "errors" sprang from the "Dissertation on the Nature of true Virtue," written by the Elder Edwards, clarum et venerabile nomen. He tells us that he has "MET with a treatise on the nature of virtue"-meaning the above "Dissertation." President Edwards did the mischief; he presented "a theory on this subject," which, by a process of philosophical and theological incubation, has proved the source of all this evil. The seminal error of the great metaphysician passed into the hands of Drs. Hopkins, Emmons, Edwards the Younger, Taylor, Mr. Finney, &c., infecting the theology of New England, and spreading its baneful influence over the Presbyterian Church. After this manner, an error apparently harmless at first, and scarcely one hundred years old, and originating with a sound divine, and one of the greatest and best of men, has been gradually, and in various directions, evolving different and cardinal errors, which have ultimately mingled and spread into vast systems, and which now float, with their dark, pestilential vapors, upon Mount Zion, distributing everywhere the elements of decline and death." p. 187. These are terrible effects of one mistake.

What then is the "theory," the "error" of President Edwards? "True virtue most essentially consists in BENEVOLENCE TO BEING IN GENERAL. Or perhaps, to speak more accurately, it is that consent of the heart to being in general, which is immediately exercised in a general good will." "When I say true virtue consists in love to being in general, I shall not be likely to be understood, that no one act of the mind, or exercise of love, is of the nature of true virtue, but what has being in general, or the great system of universal existence, for its direct and immediate object: so that no exercise of love, or kind affection to any one particular being, that is but a small part of the whole, has anything of the nature of true virtue. But that the nature of true virtue consists in a disposition to benevolence towards being in general, though from such a disposition may arise exercises of love to particular beings, as objects are presented and occasions arise." Edwards takes special pains to discriminate between natural sentiments, affections, self-love, conscience, &c., and that love of which he is speaking in the definition of true virtue. The latter is not an instinct, but subsists in connection with reason, and the grace of God producing it. It comprehends "being in general," as it is capable of application to all beings; in respect to whom it seeks whatever is their summum bonum, a question which not it, but reason and revelation determine. In eight consecutive chapters, Edwards elaborates, qualifies, and establishes this view-showing 'Edward's Works, New York edition, vol. iii., pp. 94, 95.