Amidst those noble specimens of ancient sculpture, some of the works of Michael Angelo are not thought undeserving a place. His Bacchus and Faunus, of which the well-known story is told, have been by some preferred to the two antique figures representing the same. The beautiful head of Alexander is universally admired by all the virtuosi; though they differ in opinion with regard to the circumstance in which the sculptor has intended to represent that hero. Some imagine he is dying; Mr. Addison imagines he sighs for new worlds to conquer; others that he faints with pain and loss of blood from the wounds he received at Oxydrace. Others think the features express not bodily pain or languor, but sorrow and remorse, for having murdered his faithful friend Clitus. You see how very uncertain a business this of a virtuoso is. I can hardly believe that the artist intended simply to represent him dying; there was nothing very creditable in the manner he brought on his death. Nor do I think he would choose to represent him moaning, or languishing with pain or sickness; there is nothing heroic in that; nor do we sympathise so readily with the pains of the body, as with those of the mind. As for the story of his weeping for new worlds, he will excite still less sympathy, if that is the cause of his affliction. The last conjecture, therefore, that the artist intended to represent him in a violent fit of remorse, is the most probable. The unfinished bust of Marcus Brutus, by Michael Angelo, admirably expresses the determined firmness of character which belonged to that virtuous Roman. The artist, while he wrought at this, seems to have had in his mind Horace’s Ode Justum et tenacem propositi virum Non civium ardor prava jubentium, Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quatit solidâ, &c. This would, in my opinion, be a more suitable inscription for the bust, than the concetto of Cardinal Bembo, which is at present under it[8]. Michael Angelo, in all probability was pleased with the expression he had already given the features, and chose to leave it as an unfinished sketch, rather than risk weakening it by an attempt to improve it.