"Do you know any representation of Heaven or Hell unconnected with the Last Judgment? I don't remember any, and as Purgatory is by that time past, this would account for the absence of pictures of it.
"Besides, Purgatory precedes the Resurrection—there is continual question among divines what manner of purgatorial fire it may be that affects spirits separate from the body—perhaps Heaven and Hell, as opposed to Purgatory, were felt to be picturable because not only spirits, but the risen bodies too are conceived in them.
"Bede's account of the Ayrshire seer's vision gives Purgatory in words very like Dante's description of the second stormy circle in Hell; and the angel which ultimately saves the Scotchman from the fiends comes through hell, 'quasi fulgor stellæ micantis inter tenebras'—'qual sul presso del mattino Per gli grossi vapor Marte rosseggia.' Bede's name was great in the middle ages. Dante meets him in Heaven, and, I like to hope, may have been helped by the vision of my fellow-countryman more than six hundred years before."
[4-31] I don't mean æsthesis,—but [Greek: nous], if you must talk in Greek slang.
