Dante's own eternal victory is now assured, Beatrice directs Matilda to lead him to the Eunoe, whose waters will regenerate him and fit him to ascend to Paradise. "Behold, Eunoe which gushes forth yonder, lead him thereto and as thou art wont, revive in him again his fainting powers." The poem closes with an address to the reader: "If, Reader, I possessed a longer space For writing it, I yet would sing in part Of the sweet draught that ne'er would satiate me; But inasmuch as full are all the leaves Made ready for this second canticle, The curb of art no farther lets me go. From the most holy water I returned Regenerate, in the manner of new trees That are renewed with a new foliage, Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars." (Purg., XXXIII, 136.) DANTE'S PARADISO DANTE'S PARADISO Of Dante's trilogy the Paradiso is truly his "medieval miracle of song," the supreme achievement of his genius. Here the poetry of the sublime reaches its highest point--the summit on which Dante is a lonely and unchallenged figure. "No uninspired hand," says Cardinal Manning, "has ever written thoughts so high in words, so resplendent, as the last stanza of the Divina Commedia." It was said of St. Thomas: "_Post Summam Thomae nihil restat nisi lumen gloriae_." It may be said of Dante: "_Post Dantis Paradisum nihil restat nisi visio Dei._" ("After Dante's Paradiso nothing remains but the vision of God.") Shelley's tribute to the supremacy of Dante's Heaven is no less beautiful: "Dante's apotheosis of Beatrice and the gradations of his own love and her loveliness by which, as by steps, he feigns himself to have ascended to the throne of the Supreme Cause, is the most glorious imagination of modern poetry." Ruskin says: "Every line of the Paradiso is full of the most exquisite and spiritual expressions of Christian truths and the poem is only less read than the Inferno because it requires far greater attention and perhaps, for its full enjoyment, a holier heart." That Dante's Inferno is more popular reading than his Paradiso is due to the fact that evil and its consequences offer to the artist richer material for dramatic fascination and to the reader more lively interest in characters intensely human, than does the less sensational story of the Elects finding peace and happiness in a realm transcending the experiences of human nature. Dante's Purgatorio also finds a wider circle of readers because his penitents, suffering, struggling and aspiring, like people upon earth, have more human traits and exhibit more human interest than the saints confirmed in grace against human weakness.