nd so taking their departure, ascended a gloomy
vault, till at a distance, through an opening above their heads, they
beheld the loveliness of the stars.[54]

[Footnote 1: "Parea che l'aer ne temesse."]

[Footnote 2: "La dove 'l sol tace." "The sun to me is dark, And _silent_
is the moon, Hid in her vacant interlunar cave."--Milton.]

[Footnote 3: There is great difference among the commentators respecting
the meaning of the three beasts; some supposing them passions, others
political troubles, others personal enemies, &c. The point is not of
much importance, especially as a mystery was intended; but nobody, as
Mr. Cary says, can doubt that the passage was suggested by one in the
prophet Jeremiah, v. 6: "Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay
them, and a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them; a leopard shall watch
over their cities."]

[Footnote 4:

"Che quello 'mperador che la su regna
Perch' i' fu'ribellante a la sua legge,
Non vuol che 'n sua citta per me si vegna." ]

[Footnote 5:

"Quale i fioretti dal notturno gelo
Chinati e chiusi, poi che 'l sol gl'imbianca,
Si drizzan tutti aperti in loro stelo."

Like as the flowers that with the frosty night
Are bowed and closed, soon as the sun returns,
Rise on their stems, all open and upright.]

[Footnote 6: This loss of intellectual good, and the confession of the
poet that he finds the inscription over hell-portal hard to understand
(_il senso lor m'e duro_), are among the passages in Dante which lead
some critics to suppose that his hell is nothing but an allegory,
intended at once to imply his own disbelief in it as understood by the
vulgar part of mankind, and his employment of it, nevertheless, as a
salutary check both to the foolish and the reflecting;--to the foolish,
as an alarm; and to the reflecting, as a parable. It is possible, in the
teeth of many appearances to the contrary, that such may have been the
case; but in the doubt that it affects either the foolish or the wise to
any good purpose, and in the certainty that such doctrines do a world
of mischief to tender consciences and the cause of sound piety, such
monstrous contradictions, in terms, of every sense of justice and
charity which God has implanted in the heart of man, are not to be
passed over without indignant comment.]

[Footnote 7: It is seldom that a boast of this kind--not, it must be
owned, bashful--has been allowed by posterity to be just; nay, in