The Prime Minister has written a very remarkable letter to
Professor Giambattista Giuolini, who had sent him a copy of his work on " Dante Explained by Himself." In this letter, Mr. Gladstone explains how great is his own debt to Dante, in the following emphatic words :—" You have been good enough to call that supreme poet ' a solemn master' for me. These are not empty words. The reading of Dante is not merely a pleasure, a tour de force, or a lesson; it is a vigorous discipline for the heart, the intellect, the whole man. In the school of Dante I have learned a great part of that mental provision (however insignificant it be) which has served me to make the journey of human life up to the term of nearly seventy-three years. And I should like to extend your excellent phrase, and to say that he who labours for Dante labours to serve Italy, Christianity, the world." No doubt, Dante served all three,—Italy, by giving her (pagan as her genius was) something of his own severely Christian type of mind ; Christianity, by bringing out the sublime imaginative aspects of that too dogmatically in- culcated creed; and the world, by teaching it a new rever- ence at once for Italy and for the Christian intellect. Mr. Gladstone's own " severe and earnest air " has often been remarked ; but probably few knew till this week, whence he had derived that air of burdened but passionate purpose which breathes all through Dante.
