"No greater grief than to remember days of grief when misery is at hand."

These beautiful words have often

classes as rolling great weights and smiting against each other, hurling mutual reproaches of giving and with

"Then he who ne'er

From me shall separate, at once my lips
All trembling kissed."

So, in speaking of the husband and brother, who had killed them, she says:

"Love brought us to one death: Caïna waits The soul who spilt our life.'

Lanciotto, at least, was doomed to Caïna in the lowest hell.

They next pass on to the third circle in which the second form of sensual sin, gluttony, is punished. The gluttons, certainly including the drunkards, although these are not mentioned by name, are condemned to lie in the mire under a heavy storm of hail, Cersnow, and discoloured water. berus, the three-headed dog of hell, "barks as a dog."

"He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs piecemeal disparts," while they lie "howling,"

as :

"Curs under the rainy deluge."

The sin of avarice, together with that of prodigality, is punished in the fourth circle. Here are two different sides of the same order of evil. This circle is appropriately guarded by Plutus, the god of wealth. When we remember that Aristotle ascribes a worse character to avarice than to prodigality, and that this is the popular judgment, we may venture to attribute a deeper insight to Dante, who represents both

the balance of guiltiness.

From these they pass on to the fifth circle, in which is the fourth form of sin, the Stygian lake of hatred and sadness, the sin of anger. Here the irascible and the sullen are immured. Only a few lines are given to these forms of evil, but how striking they are. Here is violent anger:

"A miry tribe, all naked, and with looks Betokening rage. They with their hands

alone

Struck not, but with the head, the breast, the feet,

Cutting each other piecemeal with their fangs.'

And thus the sullen, lying in slime, are represented as describing themselves :

"Sad once were we

In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun,
Carrying a foul and lazy mist within :
Now in these murky settlings are we sad."

With anger pride is associated, and rightly. Moreover, pride was regarded by the great doctors as the very essence of sin; and this is perhaps the reason why it has no special place here, as in the Purgatorio. Here the forms of evil are punished; there the principles are purged away.

We now come to the city of Dis (Lucifer), the beginning of the lower Hell, in which the more heinous sins, those of malice, are punished. In the sixth circle we meet with something intermediate between infirmity and malice, the sin of Heresy. The description of this circle extends over four cantos. The heretics are thrust into fiery tombs, not to be closed until the day of judgment. From beneath the coverings of the tombs, suspended above them, there come the moans of tortured spirits of heresiarchs and their followers. Dante meets here with some whom he had known on earth, e.g., Farinata degli Uberti, insolent and heretical, assuming a superiority, a reproach which the poet flung back upon him-in both cases, a reminiscence of some experiences on earth.

In the seventh circle we come upon the sixth class of sins, that of malice ; there are several divisions. First we come to the violent malicious (Cantos xii. to xvi.); and these are divided into three classes. The descent is by a precipitous chasm, formed by the earthquake which convulsed hell at the descent of our Lord thither, when He came to carry "off from Dis the mighty Spoil." They came to the river of blood, in which those are punished who have injured others by

violence. The three rounds of the violent are those guilty of violence, first, to their neighbours; secondly, to themselves; thirdly, to God; and in each case it may be either to person or to property. 1. First come murderers and tyrants in a torrent of boiling blood (1) Alexander, Attila, etc.; (2) robbers,

etc. 2. Next come, in the second class (1) suicides, (2) gamblers. Under this head he incidentally inveighs against envy:

"The harlot who ne'er turned her gloating eyes

From Cæsar's household, common vice and pest.

Dante confessed to much pride in himself, although but little envy; and he is specially bitter in his denunciation of this vice as that which had chiefly contributed to his expulsion from Florence. 3. The third kind of violence is that which is committed against God; and the two classes of offenders are (1) blasphemers, and (2) sinners against Nature and against Art. Among the first they met Capaneus, one of the seven kings of Thebes, who "held God in disdain," presenting an example of inveterate. rebellion. "Such," he says:

"Such as I was

When living, dead such now I am." And here sin is seen in the punishment of sin. The sin against Nature is represented by Brunetto Latini, a friend and teacher of Dante; and here come out his affectionate remembrances of all the man's excellences, coupled with condemnation of his sin; and he would rather dwell upon

"the dear benign paternal image, such as thine was, when so lately thou didst teach me;"

than upon the darker side of his history. Last in the seventh circle came the usurers.

This brings us to the eighth circle in which and in the following and last is the seventh form of sin. Fraud is punish

ed (Cantos xvii. to xxxii.) Arriving at the torrent of Phlegethon, they are carried across by the ruler of the fraudulent, Geryon, a personification of fraud, whose appearance agrees with his character. Like the Centaurs and the Harpies, he combines the forms of man and beast-a man above and a creeping snake and deadly scorpion below. His face is that of a righteous man, kind and gracious, his body that of a speckled serpent. "That image

vile of fraud " is thus described :

"His face the semblance of a just man's wore, So kind and gracious was its outward cheer; The rest was serpent all; two shaggy claws Reached to the armpits, and the back and heart,

And either side were painted o'er with nodes
And orbits. Colours variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e'er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o'er her curious loom. . .
So on the rim that fenced the sand with rock
Sat perched the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing his tail upturned its venomous fork,
With sting-like scorpions armed." (xvii. 7 H.)

The eighth circle is divided into ten gulfs or pits, and presents various differences from the seventh which contained the violent. (1) These were placed on a wide plain, the fraudulent are sunk in deep trenches; and the craftier they had been, the deeper the cleft. (2) The holes are hewn in rocks hard as iron, as if to show that a more hardened heart is needed for fraud than for violence. (3) In the upper circles the passage is from left to right; here they are from right to left, as showing a more tortuous character. There are in this circle no fewer than ten circular and concentric trenches, showing the numerous varieties of fraud.

These ten trenches are peopled as follows: (1) By the seducers of women and panderers, marching along in opposite directions, scourged and lashed

by horned demons. (2) By flatterers, buried to the mouth in horrid filth, flattery being a more hidden evil. The flatterers, like dogs, licked filth on earth, and are therefore condemned to a like punishment. (3) Next come

Simonians, followers of Simon Magus, trafficking in sacred things, here plunged head foremost into burning holes, their feet projecting. (xix. 26.) Dante regards their punishment with great satisfaction. Although several popes are among them, Dante disowns all disrespect to the papal see. (1. 104.) (4) In the fourth trench are soothsayers, astrologers and those who, by unlawful means, pried into the future, who are now condemned to have their faces turned, looking backwards. (5) Next come corrupt officials, barterers, or public peculators. Dante's experience of Florence taught him; but Lucca, he says, was worse. (6) Next come the hypocrites, walking with downcast eyes, golden outside, leaden within. Among these are Caiaphas, Annas and other members of the Jewish Sanhedrim, trodden on by all who pass. (7) Next are thieves tormented by venomous and pestilent serpents. (xxiv. 89.) (8) Next are evil counsellors, men who have put their talents to bad purpose in misleading others by their advice. They are hidden within the flames from which their voices come forth. In one of these sheets of flame, parted at the summit, are the souls of Ulysses and Diomede, devisers of the wooden horse. (9) Next come sowers of schism and strife, children of the devil, as the peacemakers are children of God. A demon hews their bodies asunder and cuts off their tongues and hands. The body of Mahomet is rent from head to foot. (10) Last in this circle are forgers and coiners, liars and calumniators, and impersonators. Coiners are in the last agony of dropsy; calumniators are in

burning fever, abusing and striking one another.

The ninth and last circle is still occupied with the sin of fraud, but in a yet more malignant form. We have here traitors and abusers of confidence. The sinners here appear as giants because of the greatness of their sins. They are immured in four chasms (1) Caïna, where are betrayers of relatives; (2) Antenora-traitors to their country; (3) Ptolomea-deceivers under the form of kindness; (4) Giudecca-betrayers of benefactors. In the midst of them Lucifer. The Coeytus, the fourth river in Hell, here forms a vast sea of ice. It "liker seemed to glass than water." In this frozen lake the worst sinners are imprisoned, the icy cold representing selfishness and isolation. The sufferers regard each other with mutual rage and hatred. In Giudecca, Satan is at the centre of the gulf, with wings like the sails of a gigantic windmill, freezing all around. At the centre of the earth he is wedged in eternal ice, half of his form toward his awful kingdom, while his legs protrude towards the southern hemisphere. He has three faces, symbolic of the three kinds of sin, and of the three powers which prevent Italy and man from realizing their destiny. In each of his three mouths he champs a sinner; in the middle one, Judas, the betrayer of Christ; in the two others Brutus and Cassius, the murderers of Cæsar. Here we see Dante's Ghibelline tendencies.

In this great poem there is much material for thought. Dante is indeed a preacher of righteouness, who has the deepest insight into the things of man, and the things of God. He has received the homage of the best and the wisest of men for many centuries, and we may do well to try our own spiritual vision and insight by our success in wrestling with his thoughts.

William Clark.

John Hayes and Mr. Young on behalf of the company. On its receipt by Lord Preston, he at once sent an emissary, Captain Godey, to seek out Radisson and make overtures to him. On the third floor of a house in the Faubourg St. Antoine, surrounded by a number of his relations and boon companions, the dual traitor was discovered, deeply engaged in drinking healths and in retailing his adventures to the applause of an appreciative circle. Upon the walls and mantelpiece of the apartment and such meagre furniture as it boasted, were disposed numerous relics and trophies, bespeaking a thirty years' career in the Transatlantic wilderness.

"Radisson himself," remarks Godey, was apparelled more like a savage than a Christian. His black hair, just touched with grey, hung in a wild profusion about his bare neck and shoulders. He showed a swart complexion, seamed and pitted by frost and exposure in a rigorous climate. A huge scar, wrought by the tomahawk of a drunken Indian, disfigured his left cheek. His whole costume was surmounted by a wide collar of marten's skin; his feet were adorned by buckskin moccasins. In his leather belt was sheathed a long knife." Such was the picture presented by this uncouth, adventurous Huguenot, not merely in the seclusion of his own lodgings, but to the polished and civilized folk of Paris of the seventeenth century. What were the projects harbour

ed in this indomitable man's mind? In spite of his persistent intrigues it is to be doubted if he, any more than Médard Chouart des Groseilliers, was animated by more than a desire to pursue an exciting and adventurous career. Habitually holding out for the best terms, he does not appear to have saved money when it was acquired, but spent it freely. When he died he was in receipt of a pension from the Company, so far insufficient to provide for his manner of living that they were forced to pay his remaining debts.

Unabashed by the surroundings thus presented to him, Captain Godey an

nounced himself, shook hands with the utmost cordiality with Radisson, and pleaded to be allowed to join in the convivial proceedings then in progress. The better to evince his sincerity, without further ceremony he accepted and drank as full a bumper of bad brandy and applauded with as much heartiness as any man of the party, the truly astonishing tales of their host. Godey was the last of the guests to depart.

"Look you," said he, when he and Radisson were alone together, “you, monsieur, are a brave man, and it does not become the brave to harbour vengeance. Nor does it become hardly

a

brave nation to think

of any man because of his bravery, even though that nation itself be a sufferer. You know," he pursued, “what is said about you in England?"

Radisson interrupted his guest by protesting with suspicious warmth that he neither knew nor cared anything about such a matter.

"It is said, then," answered Godey, "that you have been a traitor to the king, and that there is no authority or defence for your conduct. You and Groseilliers, whilst professing friendship for the English Company have done them great injury, and endangered the peace between the two crowns.

To this Radisson made rejoinder: "I am sorry; but all that I and my brother-in-law have done, is to be laid at the door of the Hudson's Bay Company. We wished honestly to serve them, but they cast us away as being no longer useful, when now they see what it is they have done, and how foolishly they have acted in listening to the counsels of Governor Bridgar. We really bear them no ill-will, neither the company nor his Royal High