creative forces of art and architecture were making marvelous progress
before the very eyes of Dante. Niccolo Pisano had finished his Sienna
pulpit and with his son was engaged on his immortal works of sculpture.
Orcagna had made a wonderful tabernacle for the Florentine church of San
Michele, Cimabue had painted the Madonna which is now in the Rucellai
chapel. Giotto had completed his work at Assisi and Rome and would soon
give to the world the Florentine Campanile. Fra Sisto and Fra Ristoro
had built the church Santa Maria Novella at Florence and Arnolfo di
Cambio, while Dante was writing sonnets, had begun the duomo or
cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. The stout walls and lofty tower of
the Bargello had sprung into beauteous being. Santa Croce destined to
be the burial place of illustrious Italians, had been built and remains
today one of Florence's greatest churches. St. John's Baptistry, _il
mio bel Giovanni_, had received its external facing of marble, and in
ten years after Dante's death would get its massive bronze doors which
are unparalleled in the world.

The century closed with the opening of the great Jubilee at Rome. March
twenty-fifth of the following year, 1300, Dante places as the time for
his journey through the realms of the unseen--the story of which is told
in the Divina Commedia. If sympathy with Dante and his work is not
aroused already, perhaps these two quotations may quicken your interest.

Charles Elliot Norton writes: "There are few other works of man, perhaps
there is no other, which affords such evidence as the Divine Comedy, of
uninterrupted consistency of purpose, of sustained vigor of imagination,
and of steady force of character controlling alike the vagaries of the
poetic temperament, the wavering of human purpose, the fluctuation of
human powers, the untowardness of circumstances. From the beginning to
the end of his work of many years there is no flagging of energy, no