• The stars of the Southern Cross. Figuratively the four cardinal virtues. Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, and Temperance. See Canto XXXI 106:⁠— “We here are Nymphs, and in the Heaven are stars.” The next line may be interpreted in the same figurative sense. Humboldt, Personal Narrative , II 21, Miss Williams’s Tr. , thus describes his first glimpse of the Southern Cross:⁠— “The pleasure we felt on discovering the Southern Cross was warmly shared by such of the crew as had lived in the colonies. In the solitude of the seas, we hail a star as a friend from whom we have long been separated. Among the Portuguese and the Spaniards peculiar motives seem to increase this feeling; a religious sentiment attaches them to a constellation, the form of which recalls the sign of the faith planted by their ancestors in the deserts of the New World. “The two great stars which mark the summit and the foot of the Cross having nearly the same right ascension, it follows hence, that the constellation is almost perpendicular at the moment when it passes the meridian. This circumstance is known to every nation that lives beyond the tropics, or in the Southern hemisphere. It has been observed at what hour of the night, in different seasons, the Cross o’ the South is erect or inclined.