In sculpture, the works of Michael Angelo are divided between Rome and Florence. They are not numerous, and few are even finished. Impatience of slowly progressive labour, united with indomitable activity and unwearied industry--fastidiousness of fancy, and exalted perceptions of excellence, joined with a reckless daring in execution, form singular distinctions of intellectual temperament. Hence have sprung the characteristic beauties and the besetting errors of his style in sculpture--a style discovering much that is derived from liberal and enlightened study of the sublime and graceful in nature, but still more of those qualities which arise from the peculiarities of an individual and erratic, though rich and powerful, imagination. Rarely do his statues exhibit that simplicity and repose essential to beauty in an art--grave, dignified, or even austere, and possessing means comparatively limited and uniform. Forced and constrained attitude, proportions exaggerated, expression awful, gloomy, and unearthly, forms of unnatural, of superhuman energy--these constitute the ideal of his composition. In giving visible existence to these ideas, his execution is most wonderful. A force, a fire, an enthusiasm, elsewhere unfelt, unknown, give to every limb and lineament, a vitality, a movement, resembling more the sudden mandate of inspiration, than a laborious and retarded effort. The first impressions created by these works are thus irresistibly powerful; but they startle, surprise, astonish--do not soothe, delight, and satisfy the mind. An influence originating solely in the imagination, and in which the sensibilities of the heart have little interest, cannot long retain its power; the ordinary tone of feeling returns, and amid the unquiet and aspiring composition seeks for nature and repose.