as Gladstone
contends, that he went for study to Oxford. The regret is permissible
that he did not leave us an account of his journeyings. "Had he given us
pictures--as he alone could have painted them--of scenes by the wayside
and of the courts of which he was an honored guest," says Dr. J.A. Zahm
in his Great Inspirers, "we should have had the most interesting
and the most instructive travel book ever written."

We cannot but notice one great effect brought about by traveling in
those days, especially by pilgrimages and by the Crusades formed in
defence of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and that is, that there arose on
all sides a desire for liberty and the growth of a spirit of nationality
that worked to the destruction of absolute government. The power of the
common people began to assert itself. In 1215, England forced from John
Lackland the Magna Charta, the foundation of all the liberty of English
speaking people even in modern times. The very year in which Dante was
born, representatives of the townspeople were admitted as members of the
English Parliament. In France, during the thirteenth century, the
centralization of power in the hands of the kings went forward with the
gradual diminution of the influence of the nobility--a fact operating to
the people's advantage.

In 1222 the nobles forced Andrew II of Hungary to issue the Golden Bull,
the instrument which Blackstone later declared turned "anarchy into
law." In Germany and Sicily Frederick II published laws giving a larger
measure of popular freedom. In Italy, the existence of the city
republics--especially those of Florence, Sienna, Pisa--showed how
successfully the ferment of liberty had penetrated the mass of the
body-politic.

Coming now to regard the characteristics of Dante's age we must say that
the first big thing that looms in sight is the fact that this was the
golden age of Christian faith. Everywhere the Cross, the symbol of
salvation, met the eye. It was the age when men lived in one faith, used
one ritual, professed one creed, accepted a common doctrine and moral
standard and breathed a common religious atmosphere. Heresy was not
wholly absent but it was the exception. Religion regarded then not as an
accident or an incident of life but as a benign influence permeating
the whole social fabric, not only cared for the widow and orphan and
provided for the poor, but it shaped men's thoughts, quickened their
sentiments, inspired their work and d