"Socrates," says Legouvé, "who caught glimpses of everything that he did
not clearly define, uttered one day to his disciples these beautiful
words: 'There are two Venuses: one celestial, called Urania, the
heavenly, who presides over all pure and spiritual affections; and the
other Polyhymnia, the terrestrial, who excites sensual and gross
desires.'" The history of love is the eternal struggle between these two
divinities,--the one seeking to elevate and the other to degrade. Plato,
for the first time, in his beautiful hymn to the Venus Urania, displayed
to men the unknown image of love,--the educator and the moralist,--so
that grateful ages have consecrated it by his name. Centuries rolled
away, and among the descendants of Teutonic barbarians a still lovelier
and more ideal sentiment burst out from the lips of the Christian Dante,
kindled by the adoration of his departed Beatrice. And as she courses
from star to star, explaining to him the mysteries, the transported poet
exclaims:--

"Ah, all the tongues which the Muses have inspired could not tell the
thousandth part of the beauty of the smile of Beatrice as she presented
me to the celestial group, exclaiming, 'Thou art redeemed!' O woman, in
whom lives all my hope, who hast deigned to leave for my salvation thy
footsteps on the throne of the Eternal, thou hast redeemed me from
slavery to liberty; now earth has no more dangers for me. I cherish the
image of thy purity in my bosom, that in my last hour, acceptable in
thine eyes, my soul may leave my body."

Thus did Dante impersonate the worship of Venus Urania,--spiritual
tenderness overcoming sensual desire. Thus faithful to the traditions of
this great poet did the austere Michael Angelo do reverence to the
virtues of Vittoria Colonna. Thus did the lofty Corneille present in his