Considered in connexion with the impetuous style of his composition, nothing can be finer than the execution of Michael Angelo. It participates in, it harmonizes with, his ardent temperament of mind; rapid, impatient, fervid, it seems to animate and create, rather than form, the breathing conceptions. But taken alone, it discovers many technical peculiarities and imperfections. From having sometimes merely sketched, or, at most, modelled the subject in small, nay, in some instances, with no other suggestion or guide, save the accidental shape of the block, he struck into the marble. It was impossible, under these circumstances, to avoid error. While the hand, the eye, the mind, were thus in instant exertion; while propriety of expression and beauty of outline, mechanical detail, and general effect, grandeur of the whole, and propriety of parts, were at once to be studied, and that, too, where each stroke removes what never can be again united--imperfection was almost a necessary consequence. Hence the want of proportion so conspicuous in many of his best works--in the Moses even; hence so few finished; hence, too, his statues, like paintings, seldom present more than one point of view. As regards more individual details; in the salient lines of the contours, the circles have rarely their just value, and the surfaces want their proper fulness. Partly to compensate this deficiency in the advancing curves, partly as a characteristic distinction, which consists in strongly pronouncing the muscles, the retiring lines, or muscular depressions, are expressed in exaggerated depth. Trusting to mechanical dexterity, also, and to a profound science, he was frequently reduced to work without model, or reference to the living form. This produces a rigidity, a want of feeling, and a mannerism, in his best performances even, the commencement of those conventional modes which finally superseded all diligent study of nature, and led to the abandonment of every genuine grace of sculpture.