which are reflected in the stars. Nor is it otherwise with the souls of the blessed. The Heaven of highest light is the true home of all; all are permitted to gaze on the face of God, only the measure of sight is determined by their capacity and deserts, and the Heaven to which they are, so to speak, outwardly assigned,1 is a symbol of this measure. And thus, spiritually and ultimately, the whole of this cosmography comes to be, as it were, reversed. We have been depicting the whole God-filled heaven, wherein is his city and his lofty throne, as the outermost, embracing all the others. But again, God is the sole kernel of the universe, round which the whole creation must revolve in a widening series of circles. God, says one of the Schoolmen, is indeed a circle; but a circle whose centre is everywhere and its bounding circumference nowhere. Thus, if we picture the heaven of God as stretching beyond all conceivable extension, yet may God equally be conceived as the absolutely indivisible unit, the mathematical point which occupies no space at all. The poet depicts this inverted conception, if we may so call it, thus: 2 "A point I saw that rayed out light so keen that the sight on which it blazed must needs close itself against its piercing power. And whichever star seems smallest seen from here, had seemed a moon compared with it, as star compares with star. Perchance so close as Halo seems to gird the light that paints her when the sustaining moisture is most dense, e'en at such distance round the point a fire-circle whirled so rapidly it 1 And apparently assigned only on the special occasion when they come to meet Dante and his guide, Par. iv. 28 seq. 2 Par. xxviii. 16. had surpassed that motion which most swiftest girds the universe; and this was by another girt around, that by a third, the third too by a fourth, by a fifth the fourth, then by a sixth the fifth. Above followed the seventh, already spread so wide that Juno's messenger, complete, had been too strait to hold it. And so the eighth and ninth; and each one moved more slow according as in number 't was more distant from the unit and that one had its flame most clear from which the pure spark was least distant; I believe because it plunged the deepest in the truth thereof." Thus we have followed the poet in his ascent, and have, I hope, returned unharmed to the point whence we started, I mean to your own well-grounded conception of the construction of the universe. For our last vision has been not alien from the teaching of Copernicus a vision, not indeed of the planets themselves, but of the Spirits that move them, circling around the sun, only in the place of the physical Sun the poet has placed "the Sun of the angels," God. IV THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA I. THE INFERNO.1 THE chronology of the Divine Comedy has been discussed still more elaborately than the topography and the division of sins; and all that this note attempts is to set forth in plain terms the view which approves itself to the writer. References are given to the passages which support the statements made; but there is no attempt to defend the interpretation adopted against other views. The year of the Vision is 1300, Inf. i. 1; xxi. 112– 114; Purg. ii. 98, 99; Parad. ix. 40. The sun is exactly in the equinoctial point at spring, the change of his position during the action of the poem being ignored, Inf. i. 38-40; Parad. x. 7-33; and less precisely Parad. i. 37-44. The night on which Dante loses himself in the forest is the night preceding the anniversary of the death of Christ, Inf. xxi. 112-114. At some period during that night the moon is at the full, Inf. xx. 127; and (as will presently appear) a comparison of Inf. xx. 124-126 with xxi. 112-114, together with a reference to Purg. ix. 1-9, indicates that 1 The Inferno, Temple Classics, J. M. Dent & Co. Written by P. H. Wicksteed. (By permission.) For full discussion vide Dr. Edward Moore's Time References in the Divina Commedia. the precise moment of full moon coincided with the sunrise at the end of the night in question. We have then the following data: the sun is in the equinox, the moon is at the full; and it is the night preceding the anniversary of the crucifixion. There is no day in the year 1300 which meets all these conditions. We are therefore in the presence of an ideal date, combining all the phenomena which we are accustomed to associate with Easter, but not corresponding to any actual day in the calendar. All discussions as to whether we are to call the day that Dante spent in the attempt to climb the mountain the 25th March or the 8th April (both of which, in the year 1300, were Fridays) are therefore otiose. The sun is rising, on Friday morning, when Dante begins his attempt to scale the mountain, Inf. i. 3740; it is Friday evening when he starts with Virgil on his journey, ii. 1-3; all the stars which were mounting as the poets entered the gate of Hell are descending as they pass from the 4th to the 5th circle, vii. 98, 99; that is to say, it is midnight between Friday and Saturday. As they descend from the 6th to the 7th circle the constellation of Pisces (which at the spring equinox immediately precedes the sun) is on the horizon, xi. 113; that is to say, it is somewhere between 4 and 6 A. M. on the Saturday morning. They are on the centre of the bridge over the 4th bolgia of the 8th circle as the moon sets (Jerusalem time), xx. 124-126. Now according to the rule given by Brunetto Latini, we are to allow fifty-two minutes' retardation for the moon in every twenty-four hours; that is to say, if the moon sets at sunrise one day, she will set fifty-two minutes after sunrise the |