in the one scale, and self-preservation in the other." Then follows the remark that the diffusion of slaves over a greater territory will better their condition and hasten their emancipation. He justifies Mr. Holmes in voting for the compromise rather than for the total exclusion of slavery from the territory, and recommends that every means be taken to allay the jealousy of the South, of the interference of Congress in their domestic affairs. He warns his country against stirring up angry passions upon this terrible question, and pre

of slaveholders and non-slaveholders. He | neither hold him nor let him go. Justice is was himself a slaveholder, and he knew that slavery, at least in temperate climates and northern latitudes, could only prove a curse and keep landlords poor, as it does on the south banks of the Ohio. This compromise was carried, says Mr. Calhoun, by the almost united vote of the North against the South. By it a line was drawn, separating the northern and southern territories. "The South," he adds, "has never given her sanction to it." The act was done by the non-slaveholders as an act of mere self-protection; and could southern gentlemen understand how neces-dicts ruin from its agitation.* sary it is to the emigrant to be removed from the neighborhood of a rich and aristocratical planter, to enable him to carry on unshamed his honest but humble industry, and finally, by humility, to rise into independence, wealth, and refinement, the generosity of their nature at least, if not the justice of it, would be moved with a sacred regard; and however jealous they might be of their own rights and privileges, in which no man will dare disturb them while the UNION stands, they would not with so ambitious a grasp, clutch at all the territory. No, indeed; not at all the territory!

We respect the ordinance, therefore, and the Compromise, and can say that our greatest desire is, that the present difficulty be as wisely met as were those which prompted those measures.

So much for the measures of compromise, which Mr. Calhoun laments that they were ever passed. Mr. Jefferson's letter, which he quotes, contains no argument. It only expresses a very just fear. Why he chose to quote it, it is difficult to guess. It does not condemn the compromise, and while it admits it to be an uncertain, dangerous, and temporary expedient, a mere palliative, it offers no other. It says in regard to slavery, "there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of this property, (for so it is misnamed!!) is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if, in this way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and can

*Mr. Holmes, of Maine, said Mr. Calhoun, long a member of this body, who voted for the measure, addressed a letter to Mr. Jefferson, inclosing a copy of his speech on the occasion. It drew out an answer from him which ought to be treasured up in the heart of every man who loves the country and its instituions. It is brief. I will send it to the secretary to be read. The time of the Senate cannot be better occupied than in listening to it.

To John Holmes.

MONTICELLO, APRIL 12, 1820. I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. It is a perfect justification to them. I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous ques

tion, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and fill

ed me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will mark it deeper and deeper. I can say, with connever be obliterated: and every new irritation will scious truth, that there is not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach, in any practicable way. The cession of that kind of property, (for so it is misnamed) is a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought, if in that way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and gradually, and with due sacrifices. I think it might be. But him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold and self-preservation in the other. Of one thing I am certain, that as the passage of slaves from one State to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it, so their diffusion over a greater surface would make them the accomplishment of their emancipation, by diindividually happier, and proportionally facilitate viding the burden on a greater number of coadjutors. An abstinence, too, from this act of power, would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a State. which nothing in the constitution has taken from This certainly is the exclusive right of every State, them, and given to the General Government.— Could Congress, for example, say that the non-freemen of Connecticut shall be freemen, or that they shall not emigrate into any other State?

After disposing of the compromises, Mr. | cluded from emigrating with their property into Calhoun repeats at large his former argu- any of them." ments and distinctions in regard to the power of Congress over the territories. He assumes that he has completely established the point, that Congress cannot forbid any citizen from taking any kind of property he may please into the territory, when, in fact, he has merely asserted that the power of Congress is limited, and has not proved the particular limitation. On this point it is, perhaps, unnecessary to argue further. If the point be proved for the territory that Congress has not this power, much more is it proved for States; and States have then no longer that power which they claim of excluding and freeing slaves, within their own limits. If Congress and the several states have not this power, it follows that all laws, ordinances, and compromises, whatsoever, against slavery, in all the States and in all the territories, are null and void. To what follows, all that we need offer, therefore, is simply

a denial.

"I have now concluded the discussion, so far as it relates to the power, and have, I trust, established beyond controversy, that the territories are free and open to all of the citizens of the United States, and that there is no power, under any aspect the subject can be viewed in, by which the citizens of the South can be ex

I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the genera tion of 1776, to acquire self-government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away against an abstract principle, more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect. THOMAS JEFFERSON.

But now, allowing that all may not be convinced that Congress has not the powers contended for, Mr. Calhoun appeals to equity and expediency. Is it equitable, and, for fear of consequences, is it politic for non-slaveholders to attempt to exclude slaveholders from a territory purchased by the money, and defended by the arms of all citizens alike? To this we answer, as before, that if there be a real joint ownership in the thirty States, any one, or any number of them, may demand a division of the property. But we have shown that the States, as such, have no distinct right or title to the territories: it belongs to the Nation as a whole. If then a division line is to be established, it must be from motives of Public Economy, and not in accordance with, or by arguments deduced from, the doctrines of extreme factions of the North or South. We do not wish to hurry on the inevitable crisis by any arguments of ours. We wish only that the minds of all men may be tempered for the issue.

The bill containing clauses which protect the citizens of Oregon against slavery, and throw the whole responsibility for the other territories upon the Supreme Court, has once passed the Senate, and its passage is predicted through the House. If the Court decide that slavery is not lawful in the territories, how will the South feel? And if the contrary, then how will the North feel? Was not this measure, after all, only a shifting of the responsibility upon shoulders less able to bear it? And if the Supreme Court is to be used for the decision of political questions, will not future Presidents extend such an influence, and so fill the bench as to leave its opinions on such questions no longer doubtful?

W.

THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF DANTE ALIGHIERI;

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

In Germany, which may be called the free-port and world-market of the literature of all ages and nations, Dante has been made, since the commencement of this century, a subject of serious study, and, if that be not too strong an expresSchelling, sion, of enthusiastic veneration. the philosopher, and the two Schlegels, first recalled attention to him. Thereupon followed a mass of translations and expositions of the Divina Commedia, the most successful among which were those of Philalethes, Kannegiesser, Streckfuss, (Prince John, brother to the reigning King of Saxony, and heir to the throne,) Kopisch, and Graul. Almost every aspect of this wonderful poem, poetical, historical, philosophical, and theological, has had light thrown upon it with more or less success, in larger works and in treatises, but always in such a way that much was left to engage the attention and study of future scholars.

In the small compass allowed to us by the limits of this article, we must content ourselves with endeavoring to present, in outline, A GENERAL IDEA OF THE DIVINE COMEDY, AND

IT
WITH

THE KEY TO ITS PROPER UNDERSTANDING IN DETAIL.

We will offer, first, a few remarks on the life and age of the poet, as some knowledge of these is necessary to an understanding of his work.

Dante, or properly speaking, Durante, i e. the enduring, was descended from the ancient, noble, and venerable family of Alighieri in Florence, where he was born in May, 1265, during the pontificate of Clement IV., a few years before the downfall of the illustrious imperial family of the Hohenstauffen. He prosecuted his studies in the Latin classics, especially Virgil, the Aristotelian philosophy, and the scholastic theology of his age, first in his native city, and afterwards in Bologna, Padua, and Paris, with such energy and

VOL. II. NO. II. NEW SERIES.

spirit as to make this foreign material his own inmost property, and to work out of these single elements of culture an independent organic, world-view.

In his wanderings through the halls of science and art, he was accompanied by the genius of a pure ideal love, that exercised a moulding influence on his whole character and literary activity. It was when in his ninth year, that he saw for the first time, on a festive May-day, under a laurel tree, Beatrice, a Florentine maid of the middle rank of life, of wonderful beauty and attraction. The impression made upon him opened to his imagination for the first time the rich fountain of poetry, and determined the whole character of his life. The chaste and deeply earnest character of his works, as well as the express testimony of his cotemporaries,* compels us to believe that this mysterious relation was throughout of the purest and noblest kind. Dante himself has scribed it in his Vita Nuova, in a tender, deep, and moving manner.

de

Beatrice was not destined to be the companion of his life. They continued separate from each other, though united in spirit by But seldom the bonds of a Platonic love. was he so fortunate as to enjoy her smiling salutations, and as early as the year 1290 she was, to his deepest sorrow, torn from his view by an early death. Still, though lost to him as far as her earthly form was concerned, her enrapturing image rose again in his poetic imagination, transfigured, as the symbol of Divine Wisdom and Love, or as Theology, and accompanied him in his Divina Commedia through the holy

Dante now retired to Ravenna, whither | placed him in his Disputa on the Holy Sahe caused also his children to be brought. crament, between Thomas Aquinas and His daughter Beatrice retired to a con- Duns Scotus, and in his Parnassus, between vent. According to a notice, which is not, Virgil and Homer. however, sufficiently authenticated, he himself became a monk of the Franciscan order. In this city, and in the neighboring monasteries, he completed his great poem, and died on the day of the Holy Cross, the 14th September, 1321. The honor which his fellow-citizens denied to him while living, was now shown to him by strangers, when dead. His patron, Guido Novello da Polenta, the Lord of Ravenna, caused his corpse to be carried to the chief church by the most respected citizens of the city, and to be interred in a marble coffin in the church of the Minorites. Only lately (1830) has Florence compensated the injustice done to the greatest of her sons, by erecting to his memory in the church of Santa Croce, the pantheon of Italian geniuses, a costly monument, between those of Michael Angelo and Alfieri, with the inscription: Onorate l'altissimo poeta, (Honor the most exalted of poets.)

Dante was of middle stature, somewhat bent in later years, yet full of dignity in his general appearance. His countenance, which has been preserved for the future world, by his friend the celebrated painter Giotto, is very characteristic: a noble poetical brow, a bold aquiline nose, a proudly prominent lower lip; conveying the expression of nobleness and earnestness, and of a contemplative and commanding disposition. One reads Eternity enstamped upon these features, and does not wonder that the women of Verona pointed at him, with the words: Eccovi l' uom oh' è stato all' inferno! (Behold the man that has been in Hell!) He was of a melancholy temperament. He lived buried in profound thought, and brooded over the past. Hence he appeared tiresome to spiritless and common-place minds. Prince Cangrande of Verona once asked him, why he could not entertain his court so well as a certain buffoon, who happened to be present. Dante replied, with sarcastic pride: Perche ciascuno ama il suo simile, (because every one loves his like.) His works, more especially his Divina Commedia, exhibit a rare union of the philosopher and the poet. Hence Raphael, with genial grasp, has

The age of Dante presents to us the transition of the middle ages from the time of their highest glory over into the period which led the way to the reformation. That wonderful structure, the Romano-German Catholicism, had become complete in the thirteenth century. The papacy reached its consummation in the person of Innocent III., and then waved its bishop's crosier over all the lands and nations of Europe. Opposite to this stood the Germano-Roman empire as the greatest secular power, which was most vigorously upheld by the Hohenstauffen, and which, after repeated attempts at emancipation, was again compelled to lay down its crown at the feet of the Pope. The scholastic, by which we mean the church theology of the age, as resting upon the Aristotelian philosophy and Catholic tradition, had found in Thomas Aquinas its most genial and profound representative; and had sought to show that its doctrines were the absolute truth, even to the smallest particulars. At the side of this, in the way of supplement, stood the system of the Mystics; in which, with the neglect of dialectic thought and disputation, it was attempted to enter into communion with the original fountain of life, by a bold act of direct consciousness and love-inspired feeling; according to the maxim of Bernard of Clairvaux: Tantum Deus cognoscitur, quantum diligitur. Monkery had also reached its highest point, in the formation of those colossal monastic orders, the Franciscans, Dominicans, &c., which surrounded the moral life of the nations as with a net, and introduced the practical ideas of Catholicism into the poorest huts. In the same century were erected the most celebrated of those Gothic domes, which by a wonderful and profound symbolism represented the reconciliation of heaven and earth, and formed an image of the hierarchy itself.

Finally, the greatest crusades were now accomplished, in which whole hosts of soldiers, peasants, princes, and prelates of the Occident, had, at the command of the successor of Peter, left their homes, families, trades, property, and possessions,