After learning this, Dante is surprised to find, on the summit of the Mountain, that his brows are caressed by a gentle breeze which comes from the east and bends all the trees of the Forest in one direction. Matilda tells him that it is true no atmospheric changes are felt on this Mountain, and it was for this that it was made to rise so high, so that man in the Garden of Eden, on the top of the Mountain, should be untroubled by the disturbances which occur lower down: what he feels now is no fluctuating wind. On this lofty mountain, remote from any other land in the midst of the hemisphere of sea, he feels for the first time the revolution of the atmosphere uninterruptedly following the movement of the celestial spheres. The idea that Eden was on a lofty mountain, secure from stormy weather, and inaccessible to fallen man, was a familiar one with mediæval writers: it was sometimes located on Adam’s Peak in Ceylon, and Bede thought it might rise as high as the moon, but Albertus Magnus says this was only meant figuratively. But the connection with Purgatory, and the thought that here the movement of the heavens might be felt as a soft breeze, is, so far as I know, all Dante’s own. In all the _Divine Comedy_ there is no more beautiful allegory than this. Man in the age of innocence, man to-day when purified from sin, is already partly in heaven, though he still walks the earth. And like many another allegory of Dante’s, it follows naturally from the science of his day. Aristotle had said that the upper air “flows in a circle, because it is drawn along with the circulation of the Whole,” and Aquinas:— “Thus the air which exceeds the greatest altitude of the mountains flows round, but the air which is contained within the altitude of the mountains is impeded from this flow by the immoveable parts of Earth.” _Purg._ xxviii. 103-108 is almost a poetical paraphrase of this:— “ ... In circuito tutto quanto L’aer si volge con la prima volta, Se non gli è rotto il cerchio d’alcun canto: In questa altezza, che tutta è disciolta Nell’ aer vivo, tal moto percote E fa sonar la selva, perch ’è folto.”[649] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [649] “ ... The universal atmosphere Turns in a circuit with the primal motion, Unless the circle is broken on some side: Upon this height, that all is disengaged In living ether, doth this motion strike, And make the forest sound, for it is dense.” (_Longfellow_). ------------------------------------------------------------------------