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208 of a chaos of knowledge and opinion, no longer, except by painful effort, comprehensible to our minds. For this reason we have not attempted to give more than the briefest account of these productions. They were for their day, and that day is past; but tho journey through Hell and Heaven, and that intermediate world that lies between, through guilt and penitence and blessedness, to the presence of God, with its stem firmness of justice and unspeakable meltings of pity, and all the men and women in it, who are as living as we are, is for all time.

The collection of poems called the 'Canzoniere' contains some sonnets and songs not included in any of the works we have discussed,—some beautiful, some merely quaint and curious; but there is no feature in them that demands special notice. Some of them, according to the stories of the time, lofty and refined as they are, were sung about the streets of Florence, by the carters and blacksmiths, in the very hearing of the poet; which wonderful popular appreciation of those finest ethereal voices goes far to make us believe in the stately dream-city of the 'Vita Nuova,' where, when Beatrice lived there, and the young Dante who loved her, angels, and muses, and every lovely imagination seem to have trod the antique pavement, and, with a dazzling of celestial smiles and sunshine, irradiated all the ancient place.