A parallel has frequently been drawn between the genius of Michael Angelo and that of Dante, and many have deplored the loss of that portfolio in which Michael Angelo is known to have made a series of illustrations to _The Divine Comedy_. The resemblance between the supreme Tuscan poet and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, however, to hold only when we limit our view to Dante as the author of the _Inferno_. In energy, in intense perception of evil, in unswerving condemnation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the terror of life, the poet and the painter were indeed akin. These are the characteristics which most readers associate with Dante’s genius, for the reason that most readers go no farther than the _Inferno_, or are unable to comprehend the more spiritual sublimity of the _Purgatorio_ and the _Paradiso_. The _Inferno_ describes torments which the most sluggish person can understand, and the contrasts of lurid flames and impenetrable gloom by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel at the imagination that could traverse unparalyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But Dante’s genius stopped not here: it passed in review all human nature, from its lowest sinful condition to that highest excellence when it merges with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, Dante saw that Love is even more real, the source and the goal of all things, and he proved his universality by his power to describe it. And they whose imagination is strong enough to follow him through the regions of the blessed incline to rank the third canticle of his “sacred poem” even higher than the first.