, and a
sweetness of voice, 'Charles, my successor, now the third in the Roman
empire, approach! I know that thou hast come to view these places of
punishment, where thy father and my brother groans to his destined hour:
but still to end by the intercession of the three saints, the patrons of
the kings and the people of France. Know that it will not be long ere
thou shalt be dethroned, and shortly after thou shalt die!' Then Louis
turning towards me: 'Thy Roman empire shall pass into the hands of
Louis, the son of my daughter; give him the sovereign authority, and
trust to his hands that ball of thread thou holdest.' Directly I
loosened it from the finger of my right hand to give the empire to his
son. This invested him with empire, and he became brilliant with all
light; and at the same instant, admirable to see, my spirit, greatly
wearied and broken, returned gliding into my body. Hence let all know
whatever happen, that Louis the Young possesses the Roman empire
destined by God. And so the Lord who reigneth over the living and the
dead, and whose kingdom endureth for ever and for aye, will perform when
he shall call me away to another life."

The French literary antiquaries judged of these "Visions" with the mere
nationality of their taste. Everything Gothic with them is barbarous,
and they see nothing in the redeeming spirit of genius, nor the secret
purpose of these curious documents of the age.

The Vision of Charles the Bald may be found in the ancient chronicles of
Saint Denis, which were written under the eye of the Abbe Suger, the
learned and able minister of Louis the Young, and which were certainly
composed before the thirteenth century. The learned writer of the fourth
volume of the _Melanges tires d'une grande Bibliotheque_, who had as
little taste for these mysterious visions as the other French critic,
apologises for the venerable Abbe Suger's admission of such visions:
"Assuredly," he says, "the Abbe Suger was too wise and too enlightened
to believe in similar visions; but if he suffered its insertion, or if
he inserted it himself in the chronicle of Saint Denis, it is because he
felt that such a fable offered an excellent lesson to kings, to
ministers and bishops, and it had been well if they had not had worse
tales told them." The latter part is as philosophical as the former is
the reverse.

In these extraordinary productions of a Gothic age we may assuredly
discover Dante; but what are they more