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Now there came, o'er the perturbed waves, Loud crashing, terrible, a sound that made Either shore tremble, as if of a wind Impetuous, from conflicting vapours sprung, That 'gainst some forest driving all its might,

Plucks off the branches, beats them down, and burls

Afar; then, onward passing, proudly

sweeps

Its whirlwind rage, while beasts and shepherds fly.

Mine eyes he loosed, and spake,—“ And

now direct

Thy visual nerve along that ancient foam, There thickest where the smoke ascends." As frogs

Before their foe, the serpent, through the

wave

Ply swiftly all, till at the ground each one Lies on a heap; more than a thousand spirits

Destroyed, so saw I fleeing before one Who pass'd with unwet feet the Stygian sound.

He, from his face removing the gross air, Oft his left hand forth stretched, and seemed alone

By that annoyance wearied. I perceived That he was sent from heaven, and to my guide

Turn'd me, who signal made that I should stand

Quiet, and bend to him. Ah me!-how full

Of noble anger seemed he! To the gate He came, and with his hand touched it,

whereat

Open without impediment it flew.

The departure of the angel is equal ly grand.

He turn'd back o'er the filthy way,
And syllable to us spoke none, but wore
The semblance of a man by other care
Beset and keenly pressed, than thought of

him

Who in his presence stands. Then we our steps

Toward that territory mov'd, &c.

We have made this long quotation because it is a fair specimen of Dante's peculiar cast of conception and picturing. His pictures, in general, consist of only one or two figures. Here it is an angel moving through the darkness of Hell, over a pitchy lake; at first distinguished only by the sound which precedes him, and which is strongly brought to our imagination in the fine simile of the whirlwind. There is in the original here one very expressive line, the force of which Mr Cary has not been able to reach.

Dinanzi polveroso va superbo.

The appearance of the spirits flying before the angelic vision, is no less vividly described in one of those original similies for which this poet is so remarkable; and the calm conscious power of the angel, and the painful feeling which he seems to have, of some highopposition of the infernal spirits to er office interrupted, probably, by this before us in a few words, and painted the will of the Deity, are all brought at once to the cye and to the mind.

Within the city, the first circle is that of the heretics, who are laid in open coffins, surrounded by flame. The poet has some lively dialogues with several of these personages, who had been very eminent in their day; but we must proceed more rapidly than our inclination would lead us to do. On the verge of a high bank, which descended to the next circle, he is instructed by his master in the various gradations of punishment which were next to enfrom the abyss below, they took shelsue; but a violent fetid smell arising ter, we are told, while they were conversing, behind the lid of one of the coffins. Minute circumstances of this kind, which Dante so often introwhich pervades his poem. The puduces, add much to the air of truth nishments which follow are, first, of those who do violence to others, to themselves, or to God and nature. Fraud, however, is, in the poet's view, still worse than violence, so that the whole variety of frauds, ending with treachery, forms the next class of crimes, tom of the pit. The poets are conveyed and these are punished to the very botdown the precipice on the back of a Centaur, where they find, in a pool of boiling blood, all those who have used violence on the persons of their fellow creatures. The pool is very properly of different depths, and tyrants are consigned with much justice to the deepest place, where the blood bubbles up to their brows. The Centaur carries his companions across the lake where it is shallowest,-they then find themselves in a thick wood, the trees of which are peopled by the spi rits of self-murderers; and, to make the scene more horrible, the slaughtered bodies appear hanging from the branches. This wood skirted a barren plain,

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The heat still falling fresh.

In this manner were punished those whose pride carried them even to despise the Deity. The chief figure in the picture is Capaneus, one of the seven chiefs who warred against Thebes. Dante then meets among an obscure set of men, who were scarcely to be seen wandering along the margin of a stream that divided this plain, and to recognize any of whom he was obliged (to use his own very singular yet picturesque simile) to look at them with the same anxious sharpened sight with which an old tailor looks at the eye of a needle when he is threading it; he meets among these his master in letters, Brunetto. Notwithstanding the disgraceful crime for which this man was suffering punishment, our poet, as it is remarked by the very learned critic in the Edinburgh Review, treats him with a respectful deference, shewn in the very form of his address, which is entirely lost in the translation, and which no one but an extremely accurate critic could have discovered.. There is no great poet, indeed, so attentive as Dante to the slightest and most minute shades of things. The Tesoretto of this Brunetto has been supposed, by some critics, to have given Dante the idea of his own poem; but this supposition, as well as many other alleged

sources of his materials, are shewn in the ingenious criticism now alluded to to have very little foundation. It is a matter of no consequence, indeed, whether the idea of Dante's vision is to be found elsewhere, or no. His ori❤ ginality does not consist in the general notion of visiting Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which most likely may have occurred to thousands of crazy monks in their cells; nor is there any great merit in the invention of the incidents. His merit lies mainly in his forcible and picturesque descriptions, in which, we will venture to say, he cannot but be quite original, as it is impossible they could be executed in the same way by any two different minds. Michael Angelo and Raphael would both be perfectly original in their manner of representing the same subject in painting. Dante is the Michael Angelo of poetry.

The poets are conveyed down a deep descent, into the circles of Fraud, où the back of the winged monster Ger

yon,

The description of this aërial voyage affords another fine exemplifica tion of the little circumstances which, in the hands of this great master, add so much to the vividness of his pictures.

As a small vessel, back'ning out from land
Her station quits, so thence the monster
loos'd,
And when he felt himself at large, turn'd

round

There where his breast had been, his fork

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By the dread, torments that on every side Drew nearer, how our downward course we wound.

We cannot follow the various crimes and punishments comprehended under the general head of Fraud. Some sinners, guilty of simony, appear with their feet sticking upwards, while their heads are concealed, with flames dancing upon the soles; diviners and witches, with their heads turned the wrong way; public defrauders boiling in pitch;-and in his way among these last, the poet has a strange adventure with a set of devils, who are employed in tossing in, with pitchforks, the souls that endeavour to escape from their torment. We must give a little specimen of this scene. Still earnest on the pitch I gazed, to mark All things whate'er the chasm contain'd,

and those

Who burn'd within. As dolphins that in sign

To mariners, heave high their arched backs, That thence forewarn'd they may advise to

save

Their threaten'd vessel; so at intervals, To ease the pain, his back some sinner shew'd,

Then hid more nimbly than the lightning glance.

E'en as the frogs, that of a wat'ry moat Stand at the brink, with the jaws only out, Their feet, and of the trunk all else concealed,

Thus on each part the sinners stood, but

soon

As Barbariccia was at hand, so they Drew back under the wave. I saw, and yet

My heart doth stagger, one, that waited thus,

As it befalls, that oft one frog remains While the next springs away and Graffiacan,

Who of the fiends was nearest, grappling seized

His clotted locks, and dragged him sprawling up,

That he appeared to me an otter.

We must pass over the hypocrites, whose heads are loaded with leaden caps; the impostors of various kinds, whose limbs were hacked and dismembered: those who go about clothed in fire, (Ulysses was among this number, who tells a story of his voyage and its termination, quite different from Homer's,) and, when they speak, the tip of whose flame moves like a tongue and we must go on to the concluding scene of the traitors, who

VOL. IV.

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We can conceive nothing more dreary than this sound of this solitary horn pealing through that vast and melancholy region. The towers turn out to be giants. One of them hands the two poets down to the base of the rock. We give the description of the icy lake, in a rhyme translation of this passage, which we have somewhere seen, and which seems, to us, to retain the character of Dante's composition still more accurately, perhaps, than Mr Cary's blank verse.

Were my rude rhymes as rugged, rough, and harsh,

As the o'erhanging rocks, whose horror stood

Around the margin of that murky marsh, Then might I chew, in hope, bright fancy's food;

But, since my purpose cannot be made good,

With fear and trembling each weak verse I frame!

O can it be that one of human blood, Whose tongue first stammer'd out a pa

rent's name, Should of that black abyss the secrets strange proclaim?

Assist me, then, ye ladies of the lyre;
Give to my verse your own dread energy,
E'en as Amphion's ye could once inspire,
Which girded Thebes with towers and tur-
rets high?

So shall my song with its great subject vie!

Ah! wretched race! in that internal den, (For which, in vain, appropriate terms I

try,)

B

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Lest you should crush some wretched brother's head,

And, with hard heels, his face all rudely beat!

1 turn'd, and saw before me, where was spread

says, that it is his humour. At this point is the termination of Hell, and Virgil conducts Dante out of it by a very singular contrivance,-they let themselves down Lucifer's shaggy sides, for the head and shoulders of that

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great worm,” as he is called, are all that appear sticking out of the central hole, and his limbs reach to where there is an opening into the regions of day. In the course of this descent, too, Dante is astonished at seeing Virgil turn round and ascend, and he thinks that he is to appear again under Lucifer's mouth, but this revolution was made exactly at the centre of the world, so that their ascending course brings them out at the

A mighty frozen lake, that seem'd like arch-fiend's feet. This is all abun

glass or lead.

Never as yet did winter's ruffian force
Wrap Austrian Danaw in such mantle
bleak,

Nor so enchain the Tanais in its course:
Not, on that lake were massy Tabernique
To fall, or vast Pietrapana's peak,
Would from the margin of its icy floor,
One running rent be heard to growl and
creak:

And, (in the season, when, their little

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had gash'd,

And from their weeping eyes despair's black ensigns flash'd.

The story of Count Ugolino, with which every one is familiar, follows this horrible description; and the close of the whole drama is the appearance of Lucifer himself, who, with wings flapping about him like the sails of a windmill, and with three vast mouths, is employing himself, very much to his satisfaction, in devouring three grand traitors, Judas Iscariot, Cassius, and Brutus. Why the illustrious patriots are placed in such shabby company, Dante does not think it worth his while to explain, and so we must only suppose, as Shylock

dantly ridiculous, and it is a pity that
so grand a poem should have so ludicrous
a conclusion. Take it on the whole,
however, it is, perhaps, an unequalled
exhibition of genius; and even the
imperfect view that we have given of
it may have opened glimpses, we
trust, into its dark vistas and wind-
ings, which may suffice to incline our
readers to search them more thorough-
ly for themselves. Its great excel-
lence, indeed, cannot be described in
any general view of its contents,
which, on the contrary, when strip-
ped of the divine poetry which en-
circles them, may often appear extra-
vagant and absurd; and it can only be
thoroughly felt when we surrender
our spirits with a devout submission
to the spell of the mighty magician.
It is impossible, too, we suspect, to re-
tain this spell in any translation what-
ever.

Many translations of great poets give us fine pocms, if they do not give us exactly the poem. There is no making any thing of Dante, if we have not him as he is himself. The mixture of any other mind with his, at once reduces him to the race of mortals. There must be no water mingled with his wine-no alloy with his fine gold.

D.

ON HYGROMETRY AND METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS IN GENERAL. As circumstances have occurred to render certain changes in our meteorological reports both expedient and necessary, we shall take this opportunity of explaining to our readers the cause and the nature of these alterations, as well as stating some of the

results of our experiments on that branch of science.

Since the commencement of the year 1818, we have regularly report ed the average state of Wilson's hygrometer, but, in future, we shall cease to do so, partly on account of our instrument having lately given way, and partly because, in our opinion, it is radically imperfect. It was early suggested to us, by a scientific friend, that, from the very nature of the instrument, its indications were not to be relied on, and our own experience has completely verified his conjecture. Most of our readers, we suppose, know that the instrument consists of a rat's bladder, filled with mercury, and attached to a wide thermometer tube. As the air increases in dryness, the bladder is contracted, and forces the mercury up into the tube, and when the atmosphere becomes more moist, the bladder expands, and the mercury again descends. We have found, however, that though the points of extreme moisture and dryness be at first fixed with the greatest possible accuracy, they are soon liable to derangement, from the change that takes place in the texture of the bladder, by being alternately wet and dry. For some time, perhaps weeks, or even months, we found that the instrument with which we observed, coincided with Leslie's very nearly, at the point of extreme moisture, but, after the continuance of damp or wet weather, it soon began to sink below zero, and gradually continued to do so, till, at last, it stood eight or ten de grees below the bottom of the scale. In our reports, we made allowance for this alteration, but, during the rainy weather in the early part of December, the bladder gave way, and, on examination, proved to be quite rotten and decayed. The instrument might, no doubt, be fitted up so as to be protected from the rain, and, consequently, less liable to sudden changes from wetness to dryness. We have, indeed, seen them in this form, and, from the liberality of a nobleman, who had a number of them constructed by Adie, of Edinburgh, for the purpose of giving them a fair trial, we have had a covered one for some time in our possession. We have found, however, that the instrument, in this state, is exceedingly sluggish in its movements, frequently remaining a considerable time stationary af

ter the atmosphere has undergone a very sensible change. Neither does the cover completely prevent the derangement of the scale alluded to above, and though it does no doubt delay, we suspect it will not arrest the natural tendency of the bladder to decay.

From these facts, it is obvious, we apprehend, that the invention of Mr Wilson, though both simple and ingenious, must be ranked among the many unsuccessful attempts that have been made to discover a permanently accurate hygrometer. The detect under which it labours, is common to it with De Luc's, Saussure's, and, indeed, every other instrument of the kind that depends on the expansion and contraction of animal or vegetable substances; and it is impossible to reflect on the imperfection of all these hygrometers, without being more forcibly struck with the unequalled excellence of Professor Leslie's elegant and philosophical invention. It must, at the same time, be acknowledged, however, that even the differential thermometer, when applied to the purposes of hygrometry, is, in some measure, an imperfect instrument. Its indications, taken by themselves, do not always convey a correct idea of the state of the atmosphere, with respect to moisture or dryness; or, in other words, we cannot always infer that the air is either relatively or absolutely in the same state, when the instrument stands at the same point. To explain this more fully by an example, let us suppose that Leslie's hygrometer indicates 30 degrees of dryness, while the thermometer stands at 50, and that the latter rises to 55, while the atmosphere suffers no absolute increase or diminution of moisture, then the hygrometer, instead of 30, would be found to indicate about 43. In like manner, if, on two different days, the hygrometer stands at 30, but the thermometer, on the one, at 40, and on the other at 50, the absolute quantities of moisture, in a given portion of the air, instead of being equal, would be to one another as 75 to 145, and the relative quantities, supposing absolute moisture to be denoted by 100, and absolute dryness by 0, as 43 to 58. In all cases, and at all temperatures, when the air is completely saturated with moisture, the hygrometer must stand at zero, but as the air, by an increase of tem

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