was so filled with love, his mind soared to such exalted regions of
adoration, that when she passed away he saw her only in the
beatified state, in company with saints and angels; and he was
wrapped in ecstasies which knew no end,--the unbroken adoration of
beauty, grace, and truth, even of those eternal ideas on which
Plato based all that is certain, and all that is worth living for;
that sublime realism without which life is a failure, and this
world is "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare."

This is the history and exposition of that love for Beatrice with
which the whole spiritual life of Dante is identified, and without
which the "Divine Comedy" might not have been written. I may have
given to it disproportionate attention; and it is true I might have
allegorized it, and for love of a woman I might have substituted
love for an art,--even the art of poetry, in which his soul
doubtless lived, even as Michael Angelo, his greatest fellow-
countryman, lived in the adoration of beauty, grace, and majesty.
Oh, happy and favored is the person who lives in the enjoyment of
an art! It may be humble; it may be grand. It may be music; it
may be painting, or sculpture, or architecture, or poetry, or
oratory, or landscape gardening, yea, even farming, or needle-work,
or house decoration,--anything which employs the higher faculties
of the mind, and brings order out of confusion, and takes one from
himself, from the drudgery of mechanical labors, even if it be no
higher than carving a mantelpiece or making a savory dish; for all
these things imply creation, alike the test and the reward of
genius itself, which almost every human being possesses, in some
form or other, to a greater or less degree,--one of the kindest
gifts of Deity to man.