Michael Angelo appeared and soon felt that the candidate of legitimate fame is to build his works, not on the imbecile forms of a degenerate race, disorganized by clime, country, education, laws, and society; not on the transient refinements of fashion or local sentiment, unintelligible beyond their circle and century to the rest of mankind; but to graft them on Nature's everlasting forms and those general feelings of humanity, which no time can efface, no mode of society obliterate;--and in consequence of these reflections discovered the epic part of painting: that basis, that indestructibility of forms and thoughts, that simplicity of machinery on which Homer defied the ravages of time, which sooner or later must sweep to oblivion every work propped by baser materials and factitious refinements. The subject of the Sistine Chapel is Theocracy and Religion, the Origin and the first Duty of Man. All minute discrimination of character is alien to the primeval simplicity of the moment--God and Man alone appear. The veil of Eternity is rent; Time, Space, and Matter teem; life darts from God, and adoration from the creature; deviation from this principle is the origin of Evil; the economy of Justice and Grace commences; Prophets and Sibyls in awful synod are the heralds of the Redeemer, and the host of patriarchs the pedigree of the Son of Man. The brazen Serpent and the fall of Haman, the Giant subdued by the Stripling, and the Conqueror destroyed by female weakness, are types of His mysterious progress, till Jonah pronounces Him immortal, and the magnificence of the Last Judgement sums up the whole and re-unites the Founder and the race. Michael Angelo, in his Last Judgement, with a few exceptions, has wound up the life of man, considered as the subject of religion, faithful or rebellious; and in a generic manner has distributed happiness and misery.