This noble couplet, which has moved the hearts of countless heroes and martyrs of the _Risorgimento_, even as our English Poetess was moved in ’48 at the sound of a child’s voice singing beneath her window “O bella Libertà, O bella ...!”—this couplet bears with it, as we have seen, a reference which has puzzled all the commentators, because it links with Dante’s quest of spiritual liberty the deed of Cato of Utica: the suicide by which that intransigent republican escaped submission to the founder of the Empire. And not only is Cato given an honourable place at the foot of the Mountain of Purgatory, and assured that, at the Great Day, his self-slain body shall be glorified[61]; but in the _Monarchia_,[62] Dante actually quotes with approval Cicero’s dictum in the _De Officiis_ that for Cato “it was more fitting to die than to look upon the face of a _tyrant_!” There may be other reasons for this strange discrepancy in Dante’s scheme; but one is clear. Liberty ranks so high in the Poet’s mind that it over-rides all other considerations: its typical votary may win most extraordinary and exceptional treatment! Well, an essential condition of this all-precious Liberty, this full and unobstructed self-expression and self-determination among nations, is Peace. Such a peace must needs embrace harmony within the individual life, in the home circle, in smaller local and municipal units, and, finally, harmony between the various nations of Christendom, over all of which, ideally, the mantle of the one Empire would be spread. Such a Christendom, and such an Empire, for Dante, ideally embraces the whole of mankind. This all-embracing character is, in fact, essential to it; and it is important for our purpose to note that this complete world-wide embrace (the antidote to personal ambition) never has been, and is never likely to be, achieved by any _personal_ sovereignty.