The souls of men proceeding from God, but few of them returning to their Original, are shown him under the similitude of multitudes of fish, brought down by the descent of great waters from the summit of a mountain. Men in the valley are catching them in nets. Scarce half of them reach the sea below. There the remnant swim in all directions, and at length endeavour to leap back, up to the source whence they came. Numbers are taken in the nets; only a few reach even the base of the mountain. Some who ascend higher fall back upon the rocks and die. A very few, springing from rock to rock, reach exhausted, the fountain at the top, and there forget their pains. The twenty following chapters are occupied with a dialogue, in which the divine Voice enumerates the characteristic sins of all classes of mankind, from the pope to the begging friar—from the emperor to the serf. Then commences the vision of the Nine Rocks. A mountain, enormous in breadth and height, fills all the scene. As the eye travels up the ascent, it beholds nine steep rocks, each loftier than that which preceded it,—the highest lost in the heavens. From the lowest the whole surface of the earth is visible. A net is spread over all the region beneath, but it does not reach the mountain. The multitudes seen beneath it are men in mortal sin. The men standing on the first and lowest rock are religious persons, but such as are lukewarm, defective in aspiration and in zeal. They dwell dangerously near the net—(cap. xxiii.). Some, from the first rock, are seen making their way up the precipice, and reaching the second, where they become of dazzling brightness. Those on the second rock have heartily forsaken the world; they will suffer less in purgatory, enjoy more in heaven, than those beneath; but they, too, are far from their Origin yet, and in danger of spiritual pride, self-seeking, and of growing faint and remiss in their painful progress—(cap. xxiv.). Those on the third rock, fewer in number, suffering far more severely in time, are nearer to God, will suffer little in purgatory, and are of yet more glorious aspect than their predecessors—(cap. xxv.). Such is the process to the summit. All the nine rocks must be surmounted, would we return to our Divine Source. But few attain the last, which is indeed the Gate of the Origin—the consummate blessedness, in which the believer, fearless of hell and purgatory, has annihilated self, and hath no wish or will save that of God. One of these true worshippers brings more blessing to Christendom than thousands of such as live after their own will, and know not that they are nothing. Finally, ‘the man’ is permitted a moment’s glance into the Divine ‘Origin.’ The rapture of that moment he attempted in vain to describe;—no reflection, no image, could give the least hint of it.