P. 208.--'The labours of the painter are necessarily transitory, for so are the materials that compose them. In a few years Michaelagnolo will be known like an ancient artist, only by his works in marble. Already it is difficult to determine whether his reputation be enhanced or diminished by the sombre representations of his pencil in the Pauline and Sixtine chapels, or by the few specimens of his cabinet pictures, now rarely to be met with, and exhibiting only a shadow of their original excellence. But the chief merit of this great man is not to be sought for in the remains of his pencil, nor even in his sculptures, but in the general improvement of the public taste which followed his astonishing productions. If his labours had perished with himself, the change which they effected in the opinions and the works of his contemporaries would still have entitled him to the first honours of the art. Those who from ignorance, or from envy, have endeavoured to depreciate his productions, have represented them as exceeding in their forms and attitudes the limits and the possibilities of nature, as a race of beings, the mere creatures of his own imagination; but such critics would do well to consider, whether the great reform to which we have alluded could have been effected by the most accurate representations of common life, and whether any thing short of that ideal excellence which he only knew to embody could have accomplished so important a purpose. The genius of Michaelagnolo was a leaven which was to operate on an immense and heterogeneous mass, the salt intended to give a relish to insipidity itself; it was therefore active, penetrating, energetic, so as not only effectually to resist the contagious effects of a depraved taste, but to communicate a portion of its spirit to all around.' The comprehensive conception and energy of this admirable passage prove our author to have penetrated farther into the character of Michaelagnolo, and to have found far more accurate ideas of his real prerogative, than either of his favourite biographers.[38] Before we dismiss this chapter, we state it as matter of surprise, that the accomplishments and gigantic powers of Lionardo da Vinci, a man nearly of Lorenzo's own age, appear to have shared in none of the favours which he showered on inferior artists.