THE PURGING FIRE.--At sunset the Angel of Purity, singing “Blessed are the clean of heart,” bids the poets pass through the flames that lie between them and the last stairway--the purging fire that is the wall between Dante and Beatrice. Dante endures the “burning without measure”; and they reach the ascent, greeted by dazzling light and celestial strains of _Venite benedicti Patris mei_. The Cherubims with the flaming sword, “turning every way to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. iii. 24), are thus welcoming man’s restoration to the Garden of Eden, as the serpent had endeavoured to impede it in the Valley of the Princes. Now it is a delight to mount; but night comes on, and Dante, watched over by Statius and Virgil, falls asleep on the stairs (_Purg._ xxvii.). LEAH AND LIBERTY.--Just before dawn, prelude to the new day, he dreams of Leah, a young and lovely lady gathering flowers in a meadow. The theologians took Leah as type of the active life, and Rachel, her sister, of the contemplative; a symbolism to which Richard of St. Victor gave a more mystical colour, by interpreting Leah as “affection inflamed by divine inspiration, composing itself to the norm of justice.” Leah may then represent the affection, thus inflamed and ordered, which is the perfection of the active life. At sunrise the topmost stair of Purgatory is reached, and Virgil, who can himself discern no further, resigns his guidance at the entrance to the Garden of Eden. Dante’s judgment has been made free, right, and whole; _per ch’ io te sovra te corono e mitrio_, “wherefore I crown and mitre thee over thyself” (xxvii. 142). It has been supposed that Virgil is here resigning to Dante the crown and mitre of the Emperor; _mitratus et coronatus_ was the expression used for the coronation of an Emperor when the Pope placed upon his head a mitre and a crown, which afterwards were united in the mitred crown, as seen in the great fresco at Santa Maria Novella. Others refer the crown to temporal or imperial authority, and the mitre to spiritual or ecclesiastical; for (_Mon._ iii. 4) “if man had remained in the state of innocence in which he was made by God, he would have had no need of such directive regimens,” which are “remedial against the infirmity of sin.” Dante, purified from sin, has regained this state of innocence, and has attained that liberty through which “we have our felicity here as men and our felicity elsewhere as Gods” (_Mon._ i. 12). In any case, Virgil is confirming the freedom which Dante has sought and gained by the passage through Purgatory.