when he was twenty-seven, and left him—­to use his own expression—­“to ruminate on death, and envy whomsoever dies.”  To console himself, he read Boethius, and religious philosophy was ever afterwards his favorite study.  Nor did serenity come, so deep were his sentiments, so powerful was his imagination, until he had formed an exalted purpose to write a poem in her honor, and worthy of his love.  “If it please Him through whom all things come,” said Dante, “that my life be spared, I hope to tell such things of her as never before have been seen by any one.”

Now what inspired so strange a purpose?  Was it a Platonic sentiment, like the love of Petrarch for Laura, or something that we cannot explain, and yet real,—­a mystery of the soul in its deepest cravings and aspirations?  And is love, among mortals generally, based on such a foundation?  Is it flesh and blood we love; is it the intellect; is it the character; is it the soul; is it what is inherently interesting in woman, and which everybody can see,—­the real virtues of the heart and charms of physical beauty?  Or is it what we fancy in the object of our adoration, what exists already in our own minds,—­the archetypes of eternal ideas of beauty and grace?  And do all men worship these forms of beauty which the imagination creates?  Can any woman, or any man, seen exactly as they are, incite a love which is kindred to worship?  And is any love worthy to be called love, if it does not inspire emotions which prompt to self-sacrifice, labor, and lofty ends?  Can a woman’s smiles incite to Herculean energies, and drive the willing worshipper to Aoenian heights, unless under these smiles are seen the light of life and the blessedness of supernatural fervor?  Is there, and can there be, a perpetuity in mortal charms without the recognition or the supposition of a moral beauty connected with them, which alone is pure and imperishable, and which alone creates the sacred ecstasy that revels in the enjoyment of what is divine, or what is supposed to be divine, not in man, but in the conceptions of man,—­the ever-blazing glories of goodness or of truth which the excited soul doth see in the eyes and expression of the adored image?  It is these archetypes of divinity, real or fancied, which give to love all that is enduring.  Destroy these, take away the real or fancied glories of the soul and mind, and the holy flame soon burns out.  No mortal love can last, no mortal love is beautiful, unless the visions which the mind creates are not more or less realized in the object of it, or when a person, either man or woman, is not capable of seeing ideal perfections.  The loves of savages are the loves of brutes.  The more exalted the character and the soul, the greater is the capacity of love, and the deeper its fervor.  It is not the object of love which creates this fervor, but the mind which is capable of investing it with glories.  There could not have been such intensity in Dante’s love had he not been gifted with the