This, of all the recorded apparitions of St. Michael, is the only one which can be called poetical; it is evidently borrowed from the vision of the destroying angel in Scripture. As early as the ninth century, a church or chapel dedicated to St. Michael was erected on the summit of the huge monument, which at that time must have preserved much of its antique magnificence. The church was entitled _Ecclesia Sancti Angeli usque ad Cœlos_. The bronze statue, which in memory of this miracle now surmounts the Castle of St. Angelo, was placed there in recent times by Benedict XIV., and is the work of a Flemish sculptor, Verschaffelt. I suppose no one ever looked at this statue critically—at least, for myself, I never could: nor can I remember now, whether, as a work of art, it is above or below criticism; perhaps both. With its vast wings, poised in air, as seen against the deep blue skies of Rome, or lighted up by the golden sunset, to me it was ever like what it was intended to represent—like a vision. A third apparition was that accorded to Aubert, bishop of Avranches (A.D. 706). This holy man seems to have been desirous to attract to his own diocese a portion of that sanctity (and perhaps other advantages) which Monte Galgano derived from the worship of St. Michael. In the Gulf of Avranches, in Normandy, stands a lofty isolated rock inaccessible from the land at high water, and for ages past celebrated as one of the strongest fortresses and state prisons in France. In the reign of Childebert II., St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, had a vision, in which the Archangel Michael commanded him to repair to this rock, then the terror of mariners, and erect a church to his honour on the highest point, where a bull would be found concealed, and it was to cover as much space as the bull had trampled with his hoofs: he also discovered to the bishop a well-spring of pure water, which had before been unknown. As the bishop treated this command as a dream, the Archangel appeared to him a second and a third time; and at length, to impress it on his waking memory, he touched his head with his thumb, and made a mark or hole in his skull, which he carried to the grave. This time the bishop obeyed, and a small church was built on the spot indicated; afterwards replaced by the magnificent Abbey Church, which was begun by Richard duke of Normandy, in 966, and finished by William the Conqueror. The poverty of invention shown in this legend, which is little more than a repetition of that of Monte Galgano, is very disappointing to the fancy, considering the celebrity of Mont-Saint-Michel as a place of pilgrimage, and as one of the most picturesque objects in European scenery, with its massive towers, which have braved the tempests of a thousand years, rising from the summit of the peak, and the sea weltering round its base. It failed not, however, in the effect anticipated. The worship of St. Michael became