The names of Raffaelle and Michel Angelo are so associated, that that of one always rises in the mind when the other is mentioned. Their geniuses are as absolutely opposite as are their characters. Each is the antithesis of the other. In the ancient days we have the same kind of difference between Homer and Virgil, Demosthenes and Cicero, Æschylus and Euripides; in later days, Molière and Racine, Rousseau and Voltaire, Shakespeare and Sir Philip Sidney, Beethoven and Mozart, Dante and Ariosto, Victor Hugo and Lamartine; or to take our own age, Delacroix and Ary Scheffer, Browning and Tennyson. To the one belongs the sphere of power, to the other that of charm. One fights his way to immortality, the other woos it. Raffaelle was of the latter class—sweet of nature, gentle of disposition, gifted with a rare sense of grace, a facile talent of design, and a refinement of feeling which, if it sometimes degenerated into weakness, never utterly lost its enchantment. He was exceedingly impressionable, reflected by turns the spirit of his masters,—was first Perugino, and afterwards modified his style to that of Fra Bartolommeo, and again, under the influence of Michel Angelo, strove to tread in his footsteps. He was not of a deep nature nor of a powerful character. There was nothing torrential in his genius, bursting its way through obstacles and sweeping all before it. It was rather that of the calm river, flowing at its own sweet will, and reflecting peacefully the passing figures of life. He painted as the bird sings. He was an artist because nature made him one—not because he had vowed himself to art, and was willing to struggle and fight for its smile. He was gentle and friendly—a pleasant companion—a superficial lover—handsome of person and pleasing of address—who always went surrounded by a corona of followers, who disliked work and left the execution of his designs in great measure to his pupils, while he toyed with the Fornarina. I do not mean to undervalue him in what he did. His works are charming—his invention was lively. He had the happy art of telling his story in outline, better, perhaps, than any one else of his age. His highest reach was the Madonna di S. Sisto, and this certainly is full of that large sweetness and spiritual sensibility which entitles him to the common epithet of “Divino.” But when he died at the early age of thirty-seven, he had come to his full development, and there is no reason to suppose that he would ever have attained a greater height. Indeed, during his latter years he was tired of his art, neglected his work, became more and more academic, and preferred to bask in the sunshine of his fame on its broad levels, to girding up his loins to struggle up precipitous ascents to loftier peaks. The world already began to blame him for this neglect, and to say that he had forgotten how to paint himself, and gave his designs only to his students to execute. Moved by these rumors, he determined alone to execute a work