The flowery spring in which the purified souls of the righteous are bathed for their solace, is a prototype, in some measure, of the flowery stream of Lethe, in which, according to Dante, the spirits whose purgation was accomplished were immersed in like manner. Most of the trials endured in the first five Heavens have their counterparts in the general literature of the Otherworld, down to and including the _Commedia_. The fiery river or moat before the gateways resembles the river of fire which encircles Heaven in the Book of Enoch, and the similar river about the infernal city in _Æneid_ vi. 549-50. The fiery wall, of which many parallels have already been cited, again appears in this place, where it may be compared, more aptly, with the City of Dis, its iron walls and towers glowing red-hot, in c. viii. of the _Inferno_. The fiery arch also recurs, the passage through which, and through the fiery wall, is analogous to the similar trial for the purgation of fleshly lusts in c. xxvii. of the _Purgatorio_. The scourging of the spirits by the angelic warders is like the punishment inflicted--though there by demons--in _Inf._ xviii. The description of the whirlpool in the fiery river (ch. 18) is thoroughly Dantesque in style, though none of Dante’s infernal rivers or whirlpools exactly corresponds to it in details; equally Dantesque is the realistic touch of the angel lifting out the souls on the end of his rod, ‘hard as it were of stone.’ Hitherto all the souls, good and bad alike, have been conducted by their guardian spirits. At the door of the sixth Heaven Michael assumes his accustomed function of _psychopompos_ for the remainder of the way. This Heaven is free from pain of any kind; apparently the author’s intention is to convey the impression of a solemn pause, before the soul is ushered into the awful presence of the Creator. The manner of his reception there recalls the corresponding scene in the Avestan account. This reception, and the Divine Judgment, are described in the briefest possible terms, but not the less impressively for that.[173] The fate of the reprobate is depicted in a manner at once terse and complete, presenting a remarkable contrast to the rambling enumeration of horrors in which most of the vision writers indulge. One circumstance, indeed, is marked by the grotesque horror characteristic of mediæval and Oriental imagery; namely, the twelve fiery dragons which swallow the guilty soul in succession, until the lowest finally lands him in the Devil’s maw, the destination reserved by Dante for the worst of sinners.[174]