mo
Nel aer dolce, che del sol s' allegra,
Or ci attristiam, nella belletta negra."

"We once were sad,
In the sweet air, made gladsome by the sun,
Now in these murky settlings are we sad."[148] CARY.

The virtue usually opposed to this vice of sullenness is Alacritas,
uniting the sense of activity and cheerfulness. Spenser has cheerfulness
simply, in his description, never enough to be loved or praised, of the
virtues of Womanhood; first feminineness or womanhood in specialty;
then,--

"Next to her sate goodly Shamefastnesse,
Ne ever durst, her eyes from ground upreare,
Ne ever once did looke up from her desse,[149]
As if some blame of evill she did feare
That in her cheekes made roses oft appeare:
And her against sweet Cherefulnesse was placed,
Whose eyes, like twinkling stars in evening cleare,
Were deckt with smyles that all sad humours chaced.

"And next to her sate sober Modestie,
Holding her hand upon her gentle hart;
And her against, sate comely Curtesie,
_That unto every person knew her part_;
And her before was seated overthwart
Soft Silence, and submisse Obedience,
Both linckt together never to dispart."

Sec. LX. Another notable point in Dante's system is the intensity of
uttermost punishment given to treason, the peculiar sin of Italy, and
that to which, at this day, she attributes her own misery with her own
lips. An Italian, questioned as to the causes of the failure of the
campaign of 1848, always makes one answer, "We were betrayed;" and the
most melancholy feature of the present state of Italy is principally
this, that she does not see that, of all causes to which failure might
be attributed, this is at once the most disgraceful, and the most
hopeless. In fact, Dante seems to me to have written almost
prophetically, for the instruction of modern Italy, and chiefly so in
the sixth canto of the "Purgatorio."

Sec. LXI. Hitherto we have been considering the system of the "Inferno"
only. That of the "Purgatorio" is much simpler, it being divided into
seven districts, in which the souls are severally purified from the sins
of Pride, Envy, Wrath, Indifference, Avarice, Gluttony, and Lust; the
poet thus implying in opposition, and describing in various instances,
the seven virtues of Humility, Kindness,[150] Patience, Zeal, Poverty,
Abstinence, and Chastity, as adjuncts of the Christian character, in
which it may occasio