The “soldiery of heaven” appears in the form of a vast white rose, whose petals are the seats on which the saints sit. On one hand these are filled, being occupied by holy men and women belonging to the old dispensation: while on the other the number of the elect has still to be accomplished. Beatrice having gone back to her place among the blessed beside Rachel, the task of escorting Dante is entrusted to St. Bernard, who points out where some of the more eminent have their stations. As throughout the poem, all is arranged with order and symmetry. The junction between the Old and New Testaments is indicated by the position assigned to Our Lady on one side of the circle, and in the highest row, and St. John the Baptist, who is diametrically opposite to her. Below her sit in order a series of Christ’s ancestresses Eve, Rachel, Sarah, Rebekah, Ruth; Adam is on her left, St. Peter on her right, beyond them Moses and St. John the Evangelist. On either hand of the Baptist sit St. Anne and St. Lucy, and below him a line of founders of orders and other teachers; the lower circles are filled with the spirits of children. At the close of his enumeration of these chief personages, St. Bernard observes that the time of Dante’s slumber is nearly at an end, and that they must, “like a good tailor, cut the coat according to the cloth.” In these three lines are two very noticeable points. First, the word “slumber,” implying that the whole journey through the other world has been performed in a dream; and secondly, the bold use, at perhaps the most exalted moment of the whole poem, of a trivial, almost vulgar, figure of speech. We meet with other instances of this in the _Paradise_, and they are eminently characteristic of the mediæval mind. The subject is too wide to be discussed here; but readers may be reminded of the numerous examples which the architecture of the period shows, in which grotesque or even indecent figures are introduced among the ornamental work of sacred buildings. At the beginning of the last canto, St. Bernard, in an address of exquisite beauty (of which Chaucer, in the Second Nun’s Tale has given an almost equally exquisite rendering), appeals to the Virgin--who, it will be remembered, is throughout represented as taking a special interest in Dante--for her aid to him in his last and crowning experience. Thus succoured, he is able to gaze upon the Supreme Light; and in a flash there is revealed to him a full comprehension of all fundamental truths, first those of metaphysics, then those of faith. He understands for a moment the whole composition of the universe, and then the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Trinity. The intuition is momentary, and leaves merely the memory of a memory. But the lasting effect is the entire union of his will with the Divine will, and herein, we must understand him to imply, is found the salvation the attainment of which has been the ultimate aim and object of his whole journey.