to Creed.

How swift the golden moments fled within that holy place!

How brightly beamed the light of heaven from every happy face!

Again I longed for that sweet time when

friend shall meet with friend

Which chains me in this dismal cell; My fate unknown my friends bewail:

Oh, jailer, haste that fate to tell! Oh, haste my father's heart to cheer!

His heart at once 'twill grieve and glad To know, though kept a captive here, I am not mad, I am not mad!

Sabbath has no end."

I hope to meet that minister-that congrega

tion too

In that dear home beyond the stars that shine from heaven's blue;

I doubt not I'll remember, beyond life's

evenin' gray,

He quits the grate: I knelt in vain; His glimmering lamp still, still I see; 'Tis gone, and all is gloom again. Cold-bitter cold! No warmth no light! Life, all thy comforts once I had; Yet here I'm chained this freezing night, Although not mad-no, no, not mad!

church to-day.

What! I, the child of rank and wealth

ICHELANGELO did not in any way excel the Greeks in anything that he did in the way of study from Nature, for the work of Phidias is brought to a perfection of truth and beauty which Michelangelo may have striven after, but which he certainly never achieved at all events, in his sculpture, though I shall show you a copy of one of his painted figures shortly which to my mind equals in perfection of beauty anything done by Phidias, and that out of the force of his own single genius, for the work of Phidias was completely unknown to him. But this I say that Michelangelo's best work is in no way inferior to the very highest Greek work in point of design, and that, his imitative faculty not being kept in subordination, he was enabled to see truths that no Greek ever dreamed of expressing. Above all, his vast imaginative gift, the stormy poetry of his mind, the passionate Italian nature that was in him, the soul of Dante living again in another form and finding its expression in another art, led him to contemplate a treatment of the human form which the intellectual Greek considered beyond the range of his art.

The Greeks aimed at the perfection of decorative design, and, insomuch as the study of the human form helped them to arrive at that perfection, they carried it farther and to * Michel Angelo.

a more consummate point than has ever been done before or since. But they gave themselves small scope for the display of human passion; when they represented it, it was in a cold and dignified manner which fails to awaken our sympathies. The figures of fighting warriors on the pediment of the temple of Egina receive and inflict wounds and meet their death with a fixed smile which shows that the artist intended to avoid the expression of pain or passion. The Greek artists have the supreme right to the title of "Idealists." They are the true worshippers of the ideal; the ideal of beauty once achieved, they cared not to vary it. Witness the most perfect specimen of their decorative art which remains the most perfect in the whole world: I mean the frieze of the Parthenon. There is not in the hundreds of figures which form the Panathenaic procession, except by accidents of execution, any variation of character in the beautiful ideal forms represented, whether they be of man, woman or animal; enough remains of the faces to show that they conform to two or three types throughout without variety of character or expression: all is as perfect as the most profound knowledge, the most skilful workmanship and the highest sense of beauty can make it. But with the great Florentine the realistic tendency is obvious from the beginning-not to work up to an ideal of humanity, but to study it in its countless forms of beauty and grandeur and its ever-varying moods, and to represent

these as truthfully as the deepest contemplation of Nature could enable him to do. I have not time to discuss further the subject of Greek art, but what I have said will show my meaning plainly enough, and, I hope, make it clear that I have no want of appreciation of those sublimely beautiful works which will be the school of art for the whole world as long as the world lasts. In Michelangelo we have an instance of a mind gifted with the highest imaginative faculties, and, with the most profound love and veneration for all that is most noble, most beautiful and grandest in Nature, following with the most unwearying perseverance the road most calculated to develop these faculties by studying with accurate minuteness the construction of the human form, so as to be able to give the highest reality to his conceptions. Luca Signorelli's imaginative faculty was akin to that of Michelangelo, and some go so far as to think that this painter's work had an influence on Michelangelo. This may possibly be true, and no doubt Michelangelo may have admired this painter's work greatly; but I do not see the necessity for supposing that Michelangelo was indebted to him for ideas, when we consider the vastness of his genius. The difference I wish to point out between two men alike in the character of their genius is that Michelangelo's marvellous knowledge of the human form, in which he stands alone, enabled him to give a splendid and truthful beauty to his figures, and to dwell on subtleties of modelling and of outline which are not to be found in Luca Signorelli's work. Astonishing as is the power of Luca Signorelli's imagination, and admirably true as are the action and expres

sion of his figures, he fell short precisely on that point of realism which makes the enormous gulf between him and the greater artist.

Michelangelo I consider the greatest realist the world has ever seen; the action, expression and drawing of his figures, down to the minutest folds of drapery and points of costume, down to the careful finish given to the most trivial accessories (when used), such as the books his figures hold and the desks they write on, are all studied from the point of view of being as true to Nature as they can be made. they can be made. It was not he, but his imitators and followers, who made human bodies like sacks of potatoes; he who never made, never could make, a fault of anatomy in his life, has had such followers, and who would seem, moreover, to have gloried in thinking how Michelangelesque was their work. It is his followers, again, and not he, who make their saints and prophets write with pens without ink on scrolls of paper without desks.

And here there is a very general misconception which I must dwell on for a short time, it is so very important that it should be set right. I have heard it said again and again by artists (who ought to know better) and others that Michelangelo's works may be grand in style, they may be imaginative, they may even be beautiful (sometimes), but they cannot be said to be true to Nature, on account of their exaggeration. You will all recognize that this is the common way in which Michelangelo's works are spoken of. Now, my first notion connected with a lecture on art was that of vindicating Michelangelo's honor on this point. There are, I think, many reasons-and perhaps some good ones. -for this opinion. The best and most uni

versally known of his works is the "Last Judgment," in the Sistine Chapel-a work executed when he was sixty years old, by which time his magnificent manner had possibly developed into somewhat of a mannerism; that is to say, that whereas throughout his life the necessities of his subjects, chosen, no doubt, especially for the purpose, obliged him to depict the human form in every beautiful variety of action and position, in his later years this pleasure of exercising his ingenuity in inventing and correctly representing difficulties of foreshortening seemed to grow upon him, and in some parts of the "Last Judgment"-especially in the upper part outweighed the more simple dignity with which most of it is invested. The stupendous work which to my mind has done most to make his name immortal is on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, executed twenty years before the "Last Judgment," which is on the end wall of the same chapel; and it is on this work that I take my stand in placing Michelangelo as the chief of realistic painters, not so much on the "Last Judgment," tremendous as it is both in conception and execution. Another, and the most important, reason for the charge of exaggeration is that for some reason or another no great man has ever suffered so much at the hands of the engravers. All, with one accord, have taken it into their heads that Michelangelo's work cannot be properly copied unless limbs and muscles are exaggerated in a way which they would never dream of using with another man's work; in fact, they think it necessary to import into their work every exaggerated defect which they find in the works of his imitators, or rather the defects of exaggeration to be found in

the school formed on Raphael after his death. Raphael, indeed, himself is not exempt from having made exaggerated imitations of the great master. The "Incendio del Borgo" is perhaps the beginning of that lumpy and inflated style so different from the simple and elegant work of Michelangelo. Finding, apparently, that Michelangelo is not so Michelangelesque as they expected, they feel bound to improve upon him; and the greatest master of drawing the world has ever seen has had the most ill-drawn travesties of his finest works passed off on those who are unable to visit the originals and judge for themselves. Still, those who have eyes to see can very plainly make out from the wretched stuff that engravers have given us what manner of man it was whose work is thus caricatured. It is obvious that the mind which could conceive figures so amazingly grand in intention could not be guilty of altering Nature for the purpose of producing the grotesque forms and faces shown us by the engravers. I fortunately a little time ago had the opportunity of verifying for myself what I had surmised to be true, but, much as I expected in the way of beauty before entering the Sistine, I was prepared rather to be overwhelmed by a magnificent grandeur of imagination and design than to be charmed by refined beauties of form and face; and another element of beauty I found which I had not expected, for the engravings carefully avoid representing it in their copies, and on a point of excellence for which the palin has generally been given to another painter. I mean the amazing subtlety, variety and truth of expression in the faces of the Titanic beings who sit enthroned over one's head in that amazing work. Raphael