of
praise and gratitude that ever came out of a human soul:

"O Lady, thou in whom my hope is strong
And who, for my salvation, didst endure
In Hell to leave the imprint of thy feet,
Of whatsoever things I have beheld,
As coming from thy power and from thy goodness
I recognize the power and the grace.
Thou from a slave hast brought me unto freedom,
By all those ways, by all the expedients,
Whereby thou hast the power of doing it.
Preserve towards me thy magnificence
So that this soul of mine, which thou hast healed
Pleasing to thee be loosened from the body."

Norton says: "It is needful to know Dante as a man in order fully to
appreciate him as poet."

What manner of man then was he? Redeemed by love, he was, to quote John
Addington Symonds, "the greatest, truest, sincerest man of modern
Europe."

DANTE'S INFERNO

DANTE'S INFERNO

At no period of modern times do we find that literature showed an
interest more keen in the Hereafter than at the present day. Religion
has always used both pen and voice to direct men's thoughts towards
eternity, but now it is literature that goes for subject-matter to
religion. This change of attitude is due, no doubt, to the fact that
several factors in present-day life--factors that literature cannot
ignore, have turned popular thought to religion. The World-war has
disciplined the character of men by the unspeakable experiences of
contact with shot, shell and shrapnel and the result has been that
countless numbers have turned to religion for strength and consolation.
Countless thousands whose dear ones made the supreme sacrifice for the
ideals of patriotism, also find in religion their only solace.

Those who have not this refuge turn to spiritualism and psychical
research in a futile effort to find a satisfactory solution of the
problem of the Hereafter. Again and again we see the unrest of the
ever-questioning soul depicted in the drama and the literature of the
day as it seeks enlightenment on the potentiality of the future life.
The stage presents plays based on spiritualistic manifestations or upon
supernatural healing or miraculous intervention. Many recent novels have
either psychical phenomena for their central interest or plots evolved
out of the miraculous in religion. As exponents of psychical research,
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, W.T. Stead and Sir Oliver Lodge make an appeal
to readers to accept as scientific truths, the psychic