The style and character of composition now described is evidently one of study and acquisition; we might therefore expect a gradation to be apparent in the works from which we have deduced our remarks. Accordingly, the earlier performances of the artist retain much of the simplicity and truth of the fifteenth century, exhibiting, at the same time, much of the better part of the qualities now described as the peculiar characteristics of the school. These we are inclined, upon the whole, to regard, if not the most splendid, as the most correct examples of Michael Angelo's powers. His later and more important labours present, in their full maturity, the peculiar modes of thought and execution which constitute the principles of this era. A regular gradation, however, is scarcely to be traced, since, in his very old age, he perceived and lamented the brilliant but fatal errors of his style; and, in the few works then finished, a degree of sobriety and chasteness is observed. He saw and lamented, too late, the fall prepared for sculpture. Of the works of this master at Florence, the Bacchus, notwithstanding the undignified expression of inebriety, is the most correct in its forms, and the least mannered in composition. The tombs of the Medici show much of whatever is most splendid, and what is most reprehensible in the genius of their author. They might indeed be selected as special illustrations of the general views just given. Every figure--there are six--bears the strong impress of a spirit delighting in the great and the wonderful--an imagination eager in the pursuit of untried modes of existence, and a consciousness of power to execute the most daring conceptions. Intelligence in science, breadth of touch, boldness of manner, fearlessness of difficulty, unite to give life and movement to attitudes the most remote from such as nature would voluntarily assume, or graceful design select. Rome contains the most perfect and the most wonderful of Michael Angelo's statues. The Pietà, or Virgin and Dead Saviour, in St Peter's, finished in his twentyfourth year, is not only at the head of the first division of his works, but, on the whole, is the least exaggerated, and the most natural of all. The Moses, on the tomb of Julius II., amid the creations of genius, rises a solitary and matchless monument. Without model among the productions of antiquity, it has remained inimitable and unimitated in modern times. Neither in nature do we find its prototype: it is the extraordinary conception of an extraordinary mind. Thus isolated by its own peculiar sublimity of character, this statue exhibits a striking resemblance of the imagination whence it derived existence. We behold a being who awes, who subdues, yet who fails to interest--for with such humanity entertains no communion of feeling. Here the sublime is too exclusively sought in the vehement and the marvellous; every effort is forced, every trait exaggerated, and the whole shows a daring