and the “_sasso spicco_”—that weird rent in the rocks concerning which Saint Francis believed himself to have divine revelation, that it was the result of the earthquake at the crucifixion: “quando, secondo che dice il Vangelista, le pietre si spezzarono.”[366] This, too, is an inevitable object of the Dantist’s pilgrimage, for he regards it as extremely probable that the idea of the cloven rocks in the twelfth of _Inferno_[367] came to Dante from La Verna and Franciscan lore. But there are other spots untouched by Dante, yet hallowed by memories of the “poverello di Cristo.” Such is the hollow _grembo_ in the cliff-side where the rock received the Saint into her maternal bosom, yielding “like molten wax” to the impress of his form,[368] when the fiend would have hurled him down the precipice. Such, again, is the grotto where his hermit-bed is shewn,[369] wherein he passed the first Lent of his sojourn at La Verna; and such, too, is the stone, self-consecrate, and so used without further benediction as an altar top, whereon, so legend says, the Redeemer often-times stood and conversed familiarly with his poor servant “face to face as a man speaketh unto his friend.”[370] Dante rests under the shadow of Saint Francis—not at La Verna, indeed, but at Ravenna. The Campanile of the Franciscan church stands sentry over his tomb. It is known that he was buried in the Franciscan habit: and it has been justly conjectured that his association with the Order was no mere thing of sentiment. One of the earliest commentators on the _Divina Commedia_[371] asserts that for a time he actually joined the Order, to whose girdle of cord he seems to refer,[372] as worn formerly by him as a safeguard against youthful lusts— Io avea una corda intorno cinta E con essa pensai alcuna volta Prender la lonza a la pelle dipinta. And a living Dantist has recently put forth the suggestion that this connection with the Franciscans began with his boyish studies. Between his ninth and his eighteenth year, when, according to the _Vita Nuova_, a something unnamed kept him apart from the lady of his heart, he was, so it is thought, living under strict rule, studying as a pupil under the good friars of Santa Croce,[373] and laying the foundations at once of that theological lore which amazes us to-day, and of that lofty ideal of virtue of which he sings— ... già m’ avea trafitto Prima ch’ io fuor di puerizia fosse.[374] But apart from all conjecture, ancient or modern, the Poet’s admiration of Saint Francis is so obvious and his appreciation of him so just and true, that none can read the eleventh canto of _Paradiso_ without feeling that a Dantist’s pilgrimage to the Casentino culminates not in the memories of Campaldino or of the meeting of the waters; not even in the personal reminiscences of the Poet’s exile suggested by the modern tablet on the ruined walls of Romena, but rather at La Verna— Nel crudo sasso intra Tevere ed Arno