the influence of such a style upon the progress of improvement is considered, it appears that such influence could be favorable neither to future improvement nor to stationary excellence. The greatness of Michael Angelo, then, is his own--not the grandeur of art. Both sculpture and painting he made subservient to the loftiest aims, and the most splendid fame any artist ever did, perhaps can, pursue or attain: yet each was but a slave, ministering to a glory in which neither intrinsically participated. Contemporary with the 'mighty Florentine,' but most unlike in all the characteristics of genius, save the sublimity of the final result, was Raphael, the founder and master of the Roman school. Born at Urbino, 1483, he arrived in Rome upon the invitation of his relation, Bramante, the architect, about 1508, nearly at the same time with his great rival. Dying on his thirtyseventh birthday, he has, in a short life, bequeathed to posterity works almost equally numerous, and certainly displaying more of the profound excellences and beautiful sentiment of art, than those of any name since the revival of painting. Of these inestimable productions there remain to us easel pictures in oil, cartoons, and frescos, exhibiting, also, three different manners. The first dry, little, and tedious, but not without truth--often great beauty of finishing. This was derived from his instructer, Pietro Perugino; and though observable as a general characteristic only in his early easel pictures, and some frescos at Sienna, may yet occasionally be detected in the careful pencilling even of his frescos, and in the making out of his accompaniments. The pictures which display this style are those painted after he left his master in 1493, and before his return to Urbino about 1504. The finest of these was executed in his seventeenth year, representing a Holy Family,--the Virgin raising a veil from the Infant, who sleeps. Except in the works of Da Vinci, so much sweetness of expression and beauty of design had not yet appeared in the art, as is found even in this youthful production. The second manner is an intermediate step--an attempt to escape from a minuteness which he soon discovered to be unsuitable both to his own fervor and the dignity of art. The change is perceptible immediately after he had studied the works of the Florentine masters, whose improvements, and the vigor of their enlarged style, he would at sight appreciate as movements evidently in advance, but with which he had hitherto remained unacquainted. As a separate manner, it can scarcely be said to exist; for at most it was but a new instrument in the possession of a mind which has made everything its own. All that is apparent amounts merely to a progressive melioration, extending through three or four years, of which space he resided nearly two in Florence, studying the performances of art in that city, but receiving no personal instructions, excepting a reciprocal interchange of knowledge with Fra