THE TEACH.[NGS OF DINI`E.
The Teachings of Dante. Bf Charles Allen Dinsmore (Houghton, and Co., Boston. Gs.)—This is an interesting and not too bulky volume, written from the religious point of view by an American clergyman. It is well arranged from the standpoint of its author. The first of the five sections into which it is divided is devoted to a biography and a personal characterisation of the author of the " Divine Comedy," the others being given up to"The Burden of the Message," "The Vision of Sin," "The Quest of Liberty," and " The Ascent to God." The keynote of the whole is given in this passage :—" Dante makes a continuous and irresistible appeal to the imagination, compelling it to range through strange soul•stirring experiences, stimulating it with pictures of rarest beauty, taxing it to the uttermost to conceive that which no thought can grasp. He carries the mind at once into the region of the loftiest and most commanding truths, and in that invigorating moral atmosphere it comes to a new consciousness of itself and its possibilities." Mr. Dinsmore is very enthusi Letic, and has a large command of modern Dantesque literature of the kind that is seen at its best in Tennyson. He occasionally, howeeer, allows his enthusiasm to run into mysticism, and even into reistiness.
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