anguish as we have to seek signs in the characterization of its bodily presence and physiognomy of obstinacy, uncouthness, crookedness, or the traits of superficial and mean natures, in which an obstinate conflict is first necessary, before such are meet to express real religious feeling[336] and piety. This more benign[337] intimacy of soul, this more original consonancy of exterior forms to ideal experience of this kind is what creates the charming clarity and the untroubled delight, which the genuinely beautiful works of Italian painting excite and supply. Just as we say of instrumental music that there is tone and melody in it, so, too, we find that the pure song of soul floats here in melodious fusion over the entire configuration and all its forms. And as in the music of the Italians and in the tones of their song, when the pure strains ring forth without a forced utterance, in every separate note and inflection of sound and melody, it is simply the delight of the voice itself which rings out; so, too, such an intimate personal enjoyment of the loving soul is the fundamental tone of their painting[338]. It is the same intimacy, clarity, and freedom which meet us again in the great Italian poets. To start with this artistic resonance of rhymes in their terzets, canzonets, sonnets, and stanzas, this accord, which is not merely satisfied to allay its thirst for reverberation in the one repetition, but repeats the echo three times and more, this is itself a euphony which streams forth on its own account and for the sake of its own enjoyment. And a like freedom is stamped upon the spiritual content. In Petrarch's sonnets, sestets, and canzonets it is not so much the actual possession of their subject, after which the heart yearns; it is not the consideration and emotion which are involved in the actual content of the poem as such, and which is therein necessarily expressed; rather it is the expression itself which constitutes the source of enjoyment. It is the self-delight of Love, which seeks its bliss in its own mourning, its laments, its descriptions, memories, and experience; a yearning, which is satisfied in itself as such, and with the image, the spirit of those it loves, is already in full possession of the soul, with which it longs to unite itself. Dante, too, when conducted by his master Virgil through hell and hell-fire, gazes at what is the culmination of horror, of awfulness; he is fearful, he often bursts into tears, but he strides on comforted and tranquil, without affright and anxiety, without the sullenness and embitterment which implies "these things should not be thus." Nay, even his damned in hell receive the blessedness of eternity. _Io eterno duro_ is inscribed over the gates of hell. They are what they are, without repentance and longing; they do not speak of their sufferings; they are as immaterial to us as they are to them, for they endure for ever. Rather they are absorbed simply in their