awakens no association that might not be suggested by the statue of some nameless warrior of the classic age. More appropriate is the bearing of Lorenzo, the usurper of Urbino. The stern gloom that broods over his casque, and shadows his repulsive features, scowling upon the world from whose sympathies he seems a voluntary alien, is an enduring index of his unamiable character. But it is in the Sistine chapel that Buonarroti sits pre-eminent. Who that stands beneath its grand frescoes can doubt the daring, the originality, and grasp of his genius, who triumphantly called into existence forms and movements before which ordinary minds shrink into pigmy dimensions? Yet, who that observes the rapid decline of the Michael-Angelesque school into mannered contortion and extravagant caricature, can question its mischievous influence, or the danger of opening up such fields to uninspired labourers? On both sides of the Alps, its followers or imitators, mistaking extravagance for energy, manner for power, and servilely substituting exceptional attitudes for the sublimity of nature and the dignity of repose, have copied his design without imbibing his spirit, and have embodied feeble conceptions in preposterous forms. [Footnote 228: See Gaye, _Carteggio_, II., 83-109, sub anno 1506.] Freely have we spoken of a name to whom all honour is due, whose failings may be noted as a warning, without diminishing our respect for his manifold attainments. Our readers may appreciate his success as a poet through Mr. Glassford's felicitous version of a sonnet worthy the noblest of art's disciples.[*229] [Footnote *229: Cf. J.A. SYMONDS, _The Sonnets of Michelangelo_.] "Now my fair bark through life's tempestuous flood Is steered, and full in view that port is seen, Where all must answer what their course has been, And every work be tried, if bad or good. Now do those lofty dreams, my fancy's brood, Which made of ART an idol and a queen, Melt into air; and now I feel, how keen! That what I needed most I most withstood. Ye fabled joys, ye tales of empty love, What are ye now, if twofold death be nigh? The first is certain, and the last I dread. Ah! what does Sculpture, what does Painting prove, When we have seen the Cross, and fixed our eye On Him whose arms of love were there outspread!"