"Then going before me with velocity, but always unwinding this luminous thread, he conducted me into deep valleys filled with fires, and wells inflamed, blazing with all sorts of unctuous matter. There I observed the prelates who had served my father and my ancestors. Although I trembled, I still, however, inquired of them to learn the cause of their torments. They answered 'We are the bishops of your father and your ancestors; instead of uniting them and their people in peace and concord, we sowed among them discord, and were the kindlers of evil for this are we burning in these Tartarean punishments; we, and other menslayers and devourers of rapine. Here also shall come your bishops, and that crowd of satellites who surround you, and who imitate the evil we have done.'

:

"And while I listened to them tremblingly, I beheld the blackest demons flying with hooks of burning iron, who would have caught that ball of thread which I held in my hand, and have drawn it towards them, but it darted such a reverberating light, that they could not lay hold of the thread. These demons, when at my back, hustled to precipitate me into those sulphureous pits; but my conductor, who carried the ball, wound about my shoulder a double thread, drawing me to him with such force, that we ascended high mountains of flame, from whence issued lakes and burning streams, melting all kinds of metals. There I found the souls of lords who had served my father and my brothers; some plunged in up to the hair of their heads, others to their chins, others with half their bodies immersed. These yelling, cried to me, 'It is for inflaming discontents with your father, and your brothers, and yourself, to make war and spread murder and rapine, eager for earthly spoils, that we now suffer these torments in these rivers of boiling metal.' While I was timidly bending over their suffering, I heard at my back the clamour of voices, potentes potenter tormenta patiuntur! "The powerful suffer torments powerfully; ' and I looked up, and beheld on the shores boiling streams and ardent furnaces, blazing with pitch and sulphur, full of great dragons, large scorpions, and serpents of a strange species; where also I saw some of my ancestors, princes, and my brothers also, who said to me, ‘Alas, Charles! behold our heavy punishment for evil, and for proud malignant counsels, which, in our realms and in thine, we yielded to from the lust of dominion.' As I was grieving with their groans, dragons hurried on, who sought to devour me with throats opened, belching flame and sulphur. But my leader trebled the thread over me, at whose resplendent light these were overcome. Leading me then securely, we descended into a great valley, which on one side was dark, except where lighted by ardent furnaces, while the amenity

of the other was so pleasant and splendid that I cannot describe it. I turned, however to the obscure and flaming side; I beheld some kings of my race agonised in great and strange punishments, and I thought how in one instant the huge black giants who in turmoil were working to set this whole valley into flames, would have hurled me into these gulfs; I still trembled, when the luminous thread cheered my eyes, and on the other side of the valley a light for a little while whitened, gradually breaking I observed two fountains; one, whose waters had extreme heat, the other more temperate and clear; and two large vessels filled with these waters. The luminous thread rested on one of the fervid waters, where I saw my father Louis covered to his thighs, and though labouring in the anguish of bodily pain, he spoke to me. My son Charles, fear nothing! I know that thy spirit shall return unto thy body; and God has permitted thee to come here that thou mayest witness, because of the sins I have committed, the punishments I endure. One day I am placed in the boiling bath of this large vessel, and on another changed into that of more tempered waters: this I owe to the prayers of Saint Peter, Saint Denis, Saint Remy, who are the patrons of our royal house; but if by prayers and masses, offerings and alms, psalmody and vigils, my faithful bishops, and abbots, and even all the ecclesiastical order, assist me, it will not be long before I am delivered from these boiling waters. Look on your left!' I looked, and beheld two tuns of boiling waters. These are prepared for thee,' he said, 'if thou wilt not be thy own corrector and do penance for thy crimes!' Then I began to sink with horror; but my guide perceiving the panic of my spirit, said to me, 'Follow me to the right of the valley bright in the glorious light of Paradise.' I had not long proceeded, when, amidst the most illustrious kings, I beheld my uncle Lotharius seated on a topaz, of marvellous magnitude, crowned with a most precious diadem; and beside him was his son Louis, like him crowned, and seeing me, he spake with a blandishment of air, 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

6

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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. Every thing 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 Abbé 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 Mélanges tirés d'une grande Bibliothèque, who had as little taste for these mysterious visions as the other French critic, apologises for the venerable Abbé Suger's admission of such vision: "Assuredly," he says, "the Abbé 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 than the framework of his unimitated picture! It is only this mechanical part of his sublime conceptions that we can pretend to have discovered; other poets might have adopted these "Visions;" but we should have had no 66 Divina Commedia." Mr. Cary has finely observed of these pretended origins of Dante's genius, although Mr. Cary knew only. The Vision of Alberico, "It is the scale of magnificence on which this conception was framed, and the wonderful development of it in all its parts, that may justly entitle our poet to rank among the few minds to whom the power of a great creative faculty can be ascribed." Milton might originally have sought the seminal hint of his great work from a sort of Italian mystery. In the words of Dante himself,

After all, Dante has said in a letter, "I found the ORIGINAL of MY

HELL in THE WORLD which 'we inhabit ;" and he said a greater truth than some literary antiquaries can always comprehend 1 !"

I

OF A HISTORY OF EVENTS WHICH HAVE NOT
HAPPENED.

SUCH a title might serve for work of not incurious nor unphilosophical speculation, which might enlarge our general views of human affairs, and assist our comprehension of those events which are enrolled on the registers of history. The scheme of Providence is carrying on sublunary events, by means inscrutable to us,

“A mighty maze, but not without a plan!"

Some mortals have recently written history, and "Lectures on History," who presume to explain the great scene of human affairs, affecting the same familiarity with the designs of Providence, as with the events which they compile from human authorities. Every party discovers in the events which at first were adverse to their own cause but finally terminate in their favour, that Providence had used a peculiar and particular interference: this is a source of human error and intolerant prejudice. The Jesuit Mariana, exulting over the destruction of the kingdom and nation of the Goths in Spain, observes, that "It was by a particular providence that out of their ashes might rise a new and holy Spain, to be the bulwark of the catholic religion;" and unquestionably he would have adduced as proofs of this holy Spain," the establishment of the Inquisition, and the dark idolatrous bigotry of that hoodwinked people. But a protestant will not sympathise with the feelings of the Jesuit; yet the protestants, too, will discover particular providences, and magnify human events into supernatural ones. This custom has long

66

In the recent edition of Dante, by Romanis, in four volumes, quarto, the last preserves the vision of Alberico, and a strange correspondence on its publication; the resemblances in numerous passages are pointed out. It is curious to observe that the good Catholic Abbate Cancellieri, at first maintained the authenticity of the Vision, by alleging that similar revelations have not been unusual!-the Cavaliere Gherardi Rossi attacked the whole as the crude legend of a boy who was only made the instrument of the monks, and was either a liar or a parrot! We may express our astonishment that, at the present day, a subject of mere literary inquiry should have been involved with "the faith of the Roman church." Cancellieri becomes at length submissive to the lively attacks of Rossi; and the editor gravely adds his "conclusion," which had nearly concluded nothing! He discovers pictures, sculptures, and a mystery acted, as well as Visions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from which he imagines the Inferno, the Purgatorio, and the Paradiso, owe their first conception. The originality of Dante, however, is maintained on a right principle; that the poet only employed the ideas and the materials which he found in his own country and his own times.

prevailed among fanatics: we have had books published by individuals, of "particular providences," which, as they imagined, had fallen to their lot. They are called "passages of providence;' and one I recollect by a crack-brained puritan, whose experience never went beyond his own neighbourhood, but who having a very bad temper, and many whom he considered his enemies, wrote down all the misfortunes which happened to them as acts of "particular providences," and valued his blessedness on the efficacy of his curses!

Without venturing to penetrate into the mysteries of the present order of human affairs, and the great scheme of fatality or of accident, it may be sufficiently evident to us, that often on a single. event revolve the fortunes of men and of nations.

d;

An eminent writer has speculated on the defeat of Charles the Second at Worcester, 66 as one of those events which most strikingly exemplify how much better events are disposed of by Providence, than they would be if the direction were left to the choice even of the best and the wisest men. He proceeds to show, that a royal victory must have been succeeded by other severe struggles, and by different parties. A civil war would have contained within itself another civil war. One of the blessings of his defeat at Worcester was, that it left the commonwealth's men masters of the three kingdoms, and afforded them "full leisure to complete and perfect their own structure of government. The experiment was fairly tried there was nothing from without to disturb the process; it went on duly from change to change." The close of this history is well known. Had the royalists obtained the victory at Worcester, the commonwealth party might have obstinately persisted, that had their republic not been overthrown, "their free and liberal government" would have diffused its universal happiness through the three kingdoms. This idea is ingenious; and might have been pursued in my proposed "History of Events which have not happened," under the title of "The Battle of Worcester won by Charles the Second." The chapter, however, would have had a brighter close, if the sovereign and the royalists had proved themselves better men than the knaves and fanatics of the commonwealth. It is not for us to scrutinise into the ways 66 " of Providence; but if Providence con-ducted Charles the Second to the throne, it appears to have deserted him when there.

Historians, for a particular purpose, have sometimes amused themselves with a detail of an event which did not happen. A history of this kind we find in the ninth book of Livy; and it forms a digression, where, with his delightful copiousness, he reasons on the probable consequences which would have ensued had Alexander