something like a bit of Christian refreshment after the horrors of the
_Inferno_. The first emerging from the hideous gulf to the sight of the
blue serenity of heaven, is painted in a manner inexpressibly charming.
So is the sea-shore with the coming of the angel; the valley, with the
angels in green; the repose at night on the rocks; and twenty other
pictures of gentleness and love. And yet, special and great has been the
escape of the Protestant world from this part of Roman Catholic belief;
for Purgatory is the heaviest stone that hangs about the neck of the
old and feeble in that communion. Hell is avoidable by repentance; but
Purgatory, what modest conscience shall escape? Mr. Cary, in a note on a
passage in which Dante recommends his readers to think on what follows
this expiatory state, rather than what is suffered there,[23] looks upon
the poet's injunction as an "unanswerable objection to the doctrine of
purgatory," it being difficult to conceive "how the best can meet death
without horror, if they believe it must be followed by immediate and
intense suffering." Luckily, assent is not belief; and mankind's
feelings are for the most part superior to their opinions; otherwise
the world would have been in a bad way indeed, and nature not been
vindicated of her children. But let us watch and be on our guard against
all resuscitations of superstition.

As to our Florentine's Heaven, it is full of beauties also, though
sometimes of a more questionable and pantomimical sort than is to be
found in either of the other books. I shall speak of some of them
presently; but the general impression of the place is, that it is no
heaven at all. He says it is, and talks much of its smiles and its
beatitude; but always excepting the poetry--especially the similes
brought from the more heavenly earth--we realise little but a
fantastical assemblage of doctors and doubtful characters, far more
angry and theological than celestial; giddy raptures of monks and