Dante’s greatest work is his long poem the _Divina Commedia_, divided into three parts, the _Inferno_, the _Purgatorio_, and the _Paradiso_. It tells how on Good Friday of the year of Jubilee 1300 the Florentine, meeting with the spirit of Virgil whom he had chosen as his master, was led by him through the realms of everlasting punishment and of penance, and from there was borne by another guide, Beatrice, the idealized vision of a woman he had loved on earth, up through the ‘Nine Heavens’ to the very throne of God. As a summary of mediaeval theories as to the life eternal, and also as the reflection of a fourteenth-century mind on politics of the day, the _Divine Comedy_ is indeed an historical treasury as well as a masterpiece of Italian literature. It is, however, a great deal more--the revelation of the development of a human soul. Dante’s journey is told with a mastery of atmosphere and detail that holds our imaginations to-day with the sense of reality. It was obviously still more real to himself and expresses the agonized endeavour of a soul, alive to the corruption and nerve-weariness of the world around him, to find the way of salvation, a pilgrimage crowned at last by the realization of a _Civitas Dei_ so supreme in its beauty and peace as to surpass the prophecies of St. Augustine. Now ‘Glory to the Father, to the Son, And to the Holy Spirit’ rang aloud Throughout all Paradise; that with the song My spirit reel’d, so passing sweet the strain. And what I saw was equal ecstasy: One universal smile it seemed of all things; Joy past compare; gladness unutterable; Imperishable life of peace and love; Exhaustless riches and unmeasured bliss. Dante himself did not live to fulfil his earthly dream of returning to Florence, but died at Ravenna in 1321. On his tomb is an inscription in Latin containing the words, ‘Whom Florence bore, the mother that did little love him’; while his portrait has the proud motto so typical of his whole life, ‘I yield not to misfortune’. In later centuries Florence recalled with shame her repudiation of this the greatest of her sons; but while he lived, and for some years after his death, political prejudices blinded her eyes. In the Emperor Henry VII, to whom Dante referred as ‘King of the earth and servant of God’, Florence saw an enemy so hateful that she was willing to forgo her boasted democracy, and to accept as master any prince powerful enough to oppose him. Thus she granted the _Signoria_, or ‘overlordship’ of the city, for five years to King Robert of Naples, the head of the Guelf party in Italy during the early years of the fourteenth century. * * * * * [Sidenote: Naples]