These passages all belong to a most interesting series of time indications, which we may now proceed to examine. _VI. DANTE’S JOURNEY THROUGH THE THREE REALMS: INDICATIONS OF TIME AND DIRECTION BY MEANS OF THE SKIES._ 1. TIME REFERENCES IN THE DIVINE COMEDY. The plan of the universe through which Dante feigns himself to have journeyed is familiar to all readers of the _Divine Comedy_. Hell, as the Fathers taught, was a subterranean cavity, and Dante pictures it as an inverted cone, whose apex reaches the exact centre of Earth and therefore of the universe. It is situated vertically underneath Jerusalem, the centre of the inhabited Earth. He departs from the Fathers, however, in removing Purgatory from these dim regions, and placing it on an island in the midst of the ocean of the uninhabited hemisphere, exactly at the antipodes of Jerusalem. On this island rises a mountain whose immensely lofty summit reaches the upper regions of the atmosphere, and upon the summit is the Eden of our first parents. This original conception is an extraordinary gain, both from the artistic and the allegorical points of view; and it is in harmony with the idea of Aristotle, and of many mediæval writers, that the southern hemisphere was the “nobler” part of Earth. Here, then, man was permitted to dwell before the Fall, and hither come repentant souls, saved from Hell, but not yet pure enough to enter Heaven. Paradise consists of all the spheres of mediæval astronomy, and the poet rises from one to another until he finally reaches the all-embracing Empyrean, where his vision ends. Nowhere does he describe this scheme in full, but it was evidently clear in his own mind, and by following him step by step in his journey it is easily reconstructed, and is represented in the accompanying diagram. In the same way he never states how long a time he spent on this visionary journey, yet this also he had definitely determined, and in each Cantica he refers once to the period of time alloted to each realm. In the last Circle but one of the Inferno, he is warned by Virgil that the time allowed is drawing to a close;[442] in the last but one of the Purgatorio Virgil urges him to make the best use of the time appointed;[443] and in the Paradiso, just before the final vision, St. Bernard tells him that the time of his trance is nearly over.[444] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [442] _Inf._ xxix. 11. [443] _Purg._ xxiii. 5, 6. [444] _Par._ xxxii. 139. ------------------------------------------------------------------------