incarnation, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body,
salvation by faith, the triumph of Christ, the glory of Paradise, the
mysteries of the divine and human natures; and with these disquisitions
are reproofs of bad popes, and even of some of the bad customs of the
Church, like indulgences, and the corruptions of the monastic system.
The _Paradiso_ is a thesaurus of Mediaeval theology,--obscure, but
lofty, mixed up with all the learning of the age, even of the lives of
saints and heroes and kings and prophets. Saint Peter examines Dante
upon faith, James upon hope, and John upon charity. Virgil here has
ceased to be his guide; but Beatrice, robed in celestial loveliness,
conducts him from circle to circle, and explains the sublimest doctrines
and resolves his mortal doubts,--the object still of his adoration, and
inferior only to the mother of our Lord, _regina angelorum, mater
carissima_, whom the Church even then devoutly worshipped, and to whom
the greatest sages prayed.

"Thou virgin mother, daughter of thy Son,
Humble and high beyond all other creatures,
The limit fixed of the eternal counsel,--
Thou art the one who such nobility
To human nature gave, that its Creator
Did not disdain to make himself its creature.
Not only thy benignity gives succor
To him who asketh it, but oftentimes
Forerunneth of its own accord the asking.
In thee compassion is; in thee is pity;
In thee magnificence; in thee unites
Whate'er of goodness is in any creature."

In the glorious meditation of those grand subjects which had such a