418 COSMOS. 



When the glory of the Aramaeic, Greek, and Roman domi- 

 nionor I might almost say, when the ancient world had 

 passed away, we find in the great and inspired founder of a new 

 era, Dante Alighieri, occasional manifestations of the deepest 

 sensibility to the charms of the terrestrial life of nature, when- 

 ever he abstracts himself from the passionate and subjec- 

 tive control of that despondent mysticism, which constituted 

 the general circle of his ideas. The period in which he lived 

 followed immediately that of the decline of the Suabian Minne- 

 singers, of whom I have already spoken. At the close of the 

 first canto of his Purgatorio^ Dante depicts with inimitable 

 grace the morning fragrance, and the trembling light on the 

 mirror of the gently moved and distant sea (U tremolar della 

 marina] ; and in the fifth canto, the bursting of the clouds, 

 and the swelling of the rivers, when after the battle of Cam- 

 paldino, the body of Buonconte da Montefeltro was lost in the 

 Arno.f The entrance into the thick grove of the terrestrial 

 paradise, is drawn from the poet's remembrance of the pine 

 forest near Ravenna, " la pineta in sul lito di chiassi"\ where 

 the matin song of the birds resounds through the leafy boughs. 

 The local fidelity of this picture of nature contrasts in the 

 celestial paradise with the " stream of light flashing innumerable 

 sparks, which fall into the flowers on the shore, and then, aa 



* Dante, Purgatorio, canto i. v. 115: 



" L' alba vinceva V ora mattutina 

 Che fuggia 'nnanzi, si che di Ionian*) 

 Conobbi il tremolar della marina" . . . 

 f Purg., canto v., v. 109 127: 



"Ben sai come nell' aer si raccoglie 

 Quell' umido vapor, che in acqua riede, 

 Tosto che sale, dove '1 freddo il coglie" .... 

 $ Purg., canto xxviii. v. 1-24. 

 Parad., canto xxx. v. 61-69: 



"E vidi lume in forma di riviera 

 Fulvido di fulgori intra due rive 

 Dipinte di inirabil primavera. 



Di tal fiumana uscian faville vive 

 E d' ogni parte si mettean ne' fiori. 

 Quasi rubiii, cne oro circonscrive. 



Poi come inebriate dagli odori, 



Riprofondavan se nel iniro gur^e 



' uu* entrava, un altra n' uecia fhort * 



