A History of Italian Literature

ess and mediator in the political crises of that stormy period. The Florentines chose her as their ambassadress to Pope Gregory XI. by whom they had been excommunicated. Thoroughly successful in this mission, she was the only person in all Europe who could persuade Gregory XI to leave Avignon and return to Rome! Urban VI appointed her ambassadress to Joanna I of Naples. The Italians possess 383 Letters from the pen of this remarkable woman, and from the specimens that I have read it is easy to see that she possessed wonderful endowments both of mind and heart. All Art Students are, of course, familiar with the glorious paintings which represent St. Catherine of Siena. That of Fra Bartolomeo in the Louvre is peculiarly beautiful. Dante, the "Hero of Thought' Part I. ? The Inferno. If Dante "felt exalted in his own being" when, on the "green-enameled plain" surrounding Dis, he was permitted to hold intercourse with the great poets of antiquity, how much more must we feel our exaltation when we find ourselves in the august presence of the great Dante! Preeminently the poet of exalted thought and feeling, in journeying with him we are compelled to realize the dignity of our own being; and however humble our sphere of thought may have been hitherto, we are henceforth lifted up to the contemplation of life's sublimest mysteries. Dante's hold upon the centuries is to be accounted for by the consummate skill with which he depicts man as a free, that is, a moral agent;...