280 AUSTRALIA AND HOMEWARD. 



fine, his lofty spirit, suffering much with its keen con- 

 sciousness of most unjust and cruel treatment, replies, 

 " If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I 

 will never return." 



Is it not very remarkable that all the greatest bless- 

 ings have come to humanity by way of the cross ? 

 " Crucify him ! " or words implying the same, has been 

 a common cry in all ages respecting those who have 

 carried in their being great thoughts and principles 

 which the world sadly needed blessings which can 

 come to us apparently only by means of the Roman 

 soldier's spear, Smithfield fires, the clanking chains of 

 the Lollard's tower, the bolts and bars of the Bedford 

 jail, or banishments and burnings. Poor Dante ! 



" We will complain of nothing," says Thomas Car- 

 lyle. "A nobler destiny was appointed for him. The 

 great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home 

 more and more in that awful other world. His 

 thoughts brooded on that as the one fact important 

 for him. Florence he might never see ; but hell, 

 heaven, eternity, he would surely see. What is Flor- 

 ence, and the world, and life, altogether, compared 

 with these ? Had all gone right with him (in a 

 worldly sense) he might have been Prior, Podesta, or 

 whatsoever they call it ; or Florence might have had 



