s utterance of
the _first_ Thought of men,--the chief recognized virtue, Courage,
Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but
for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only!--

* * * * *

And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very
strange way, found a voice. The _Divina Commedia_ is of Dante's
writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only
the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the
smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning
methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past
inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all
things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they
lived by stands here, in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of
his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation
of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they; but also
is not he precious? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb; not
dead, yet living voiceless.

On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at once of one
of the greatest human souls, and of the highest thing that Europe had
hitherto realized for itself? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is
another than Paganism in the rude Norse mind; another than 'Bastard
Christianism' half articulately spoken in the Arab desert, seven
hundred years before!--The noblest _idea_ made _real_ hitherto among
men, is sung, and emblemed forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men.
In the one sense and in the other, are we not right glad to possess
it? As I calculate, it may last yet for long thousands of years. For
the thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul,
differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer
is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer passes away, in
swift endless changes; the inmost is the same yesterday, to-day, and
for ever. True souls, in all generations of the world, who look on
this Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sincerity of his
thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sincerity;
they will feel that this Dante too was a brother. Napoleon in
Saint-Helena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. The
oldest Hebrew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from ours,
does yet, because he speaks from the heart of man, speak