no need of
bursting out; a mild, slow, gentle heat, which caresses it from below,
and, calling it nearer, says in a whisper, "Come down."

* * * * *

The Witch has something to laugh at, if from the gloom she can see how
utterly Dante and St. Thomas,[37] in the bright light yonder, ignore
the true position of things. They fancy that the Devil wins his way by
cunning or by terror. They make him grotesque and coarse, as in his
childhood, when Jesus could still send him into the herd of swine. Or
else they make him subtle as a logician of the schools, or a
fault-finding lawyer. If he had been no better than this compound of
beast and disputant,--if he had only lived in the mire or on
fine-drawn quibbles about nothing, he would very soon have died of
hunger.

[37] St. Thomas Aquinas, the "Angelic Doctor," who died in
1274.--TRANS.

People were too ready to crow over him, when he was shewn by
Bartolus[38] pleading against the woman--that is, the Virgin--who gets
him nonsuited and condemned with costs. At that time, indeed, the very
contrary was happening on earth. By a master-stroke of his he had won
over the plaintiff herself, his fair antagonist, the Woman; had
seduced her, not indeed by verbal pleadings, but by arguments not less
real than they were charming and irresistible. He put into her hands
the fruits of science and of nature.

[38] Bartolus or Bartoli, a lawyer and law-writer of the
fourteenth century.--TRANS.

No need for controversies, for pleas of any kind: he simply shows
himself. In the East, the new-found Paradise, he begins to work. From
that Asian world, which men had thought to destroy, there springs
forth a peerless day-dawn, whose beams travel afar until they pierce
the deep winter of the West. There dawns on us a world of nature and
of art, accursed of the ignorant indeed, but now at length come
forward to vanquish its late victors in a pleasant war of love and
motherly endearments. All are conquered, all rave about it; they will
have nothing but Asia herself. With her hands full she comes to meet
us. Her tissues, shawls, her carpets so agreeably soft, so wondrously
harmonized, her bright and well-wrought blades, her richly damascened
arms, make us aware of our own barbarism. Moreover, little as that may
seem, these accursed lands of the "miscreant," ruled by Satan, are
visibly blessed with the fairest fruits of nature, that elixir of the
powers