speaks with strong admiration of the founders of the system which prevailed in his time. Thomas, Albert, Gratian, Peter Lombard, occupy distinguished places in the Paradise. The first, who is the poet's instructor, says,-- Io fui degli agni della santa greggia Che Domenico mena per cammino U' ben s'impingua se non si vaneggia. Questo che m'è a destra piu vicino Frate e maestro fummi; ed esso Alberto E di Cologna, ed io Tomas d'Aquino.... Quell' altro fiammeggiar esce del riso De Grazian, che l'uno et l'altro foro Ajutò si che piace in Paradiso. I, then, was of the lambs that Dominic Leads, for his saintly flock, along the way Where well they thrive not swoln with vanity. He nearest on my right-hand brother was And master to me; Albert of Cologne Is this; and of Aquinum Thomas, I.... That next resplendence issues from the smile Of Gratian, who to either forum lent Such help as favour wins in Paradise. It appears probable that neither poetry, nor painting, nor the other arts which require for their perfection a lofty and spiritualized imagination, would have appeared in the noble and beautiful forms which they assumed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, if men of genius had, at the beginning of that period, made it their main business to discover the laws of nature, and to reduce them to a rigorous scientific form. Yet who can doubt that the absence of these touching and impressive works would have left one of the best and purest parts of man's nature without its due nutriment and development? It may perhaps be a necessary condition in the progress of man, that the Arts which aim at beauty should reach their excellence before the Sciences which seek speculative truth; and if this be so, we inherit, from the middle ages, treasures which may well reconcile us to the delay which took place in their cultivation of experimental science.