spiritual weapons, unhallowed in every church, because unscriptural, or than--more unjustifiable still, when wielded by ministers of peace--secular arms. Rome was to be rendered the home and habitation of art, as of religion. She was to contain a temple vainly hoped to become the Zion of the Christian world. All these causes, favorable as they were to general developement of talent, tended with a peculiar energy to the advancement of sculpture, in which, with the exception of poetry, the greatest progress had yet been accomplished since the revival of intelligence. The path, too, which had here been pursued, led directly to excellence. Nothing was to be unlearned. The era bore a striking resemblance in its leading features to that of Pericles; there was wanting only a Phidias to realize its expectancy; and in Michael Angelo, the genius of Greece seemed to be supplied. For three fourths of the sixteenth century, this extraordinary man presided in the schools, and by his style influenced much longer the principles of modern art. To him, therefore, during the most brilliant period in the annals which we are now feebly endeavoring to trace, is the attention chiefly directed. Nor only in one point of view, is his genius to be contemplated. He has extended the grasp of a mighty though irregular spirit over our whole subject. Sculptor of the Moses, painter of the Last Judgment, architect of the Cupola--we behold in him the greatest of the works of art. It is this, more than any other circumstance, which has invested the character of his genius with a species of awful supremacy not to be inquired into; discrimination is lost in general admiration; and to him who thus seems to bear away the palm of universal talent, we are inclined to concede the foremost rank in each separate pursuit. His productions, thus dominating among the labours of man, bewilder the judgment both by their real and their apparent magnitude. Thus some giant cliff, rising far above minor elevations, while it serves as a landmark to the traveller, misleads his conceptions of its own distance and immediate relations of site. Here it appears the proper, or at least simplest method, to present such gradual unfolding of the subject as each branch separately may seem to require, reserving a general view for such place as shall give the reader full command of the joint influences, bearings, and consequences of these details.