Volume I Part 24 (1/2)

All undulates to meet the eye, glides or floats upon the soul's horizon, as soft as is consistent with perfectly distinct and filled-out forms. The graceful Lionardo might see his pictures in moss; the beautiful Raphael on the cloud, or wave, or foliage; but thou, Michel, didst look straight upwards to the heaven, and grasp and bring thine down from the very sun of invention.

'How Raphael revels in the image! His life is all reproduced; nothing was abstract or conscious. Pantheism, Polytheism, Greek G.o.d of Beauty, Apollo Musagetes,--what need of life beyond the divine work? ”I paint,” said he, ”from an idea that comes into my mind.”

'But thou, Michel, didst not only feel but see the divine Ideal. Thine is the conscious monotheism of Jewry. Like thy own Moses, even on the mount of celestial converse, thou didst ask thy G.o.d to show now his face, and didst write his words, not in the alphabet of flowers, but on stone tables.

'It is, indeed, the two geniuses of Greece and Jewry, which are reproduced in these two men. Thaumaturgus nature saw fit to wait but a very few years before using these moulds again, in smaller s.p.a.ce. Would you read the Bible aright? look at Michel; the Greek Mythology? look at Raphael. Would you know how the sublime coexists with the beautiful, or the beautiful with the sublime? would you see power and truth regnant on the one side, with beauty and love harmonious and ministrant, but subordinate; or would you look at the other aspect of Deity?--study here. Would you open all the founts of marvel, admiration, and tenderness?--study both.

'One is not higher than the other; yet I am conscious of a slight rebuke from Michel, for having so poured out my soul at the feet of his brother angel. He seems to remind of Mr. E.'s view, and ask, ”Why did you not question whether there was not aught else? why not reserve some inaccessible stronghold for me? why did you unlock the floodgates of the mind to such tides of emotion?” But there is no reality or permanence in this; it is only a reminder that the feminine part of human nature must not be dominant.

'The prophets of Michel Angelo excite all my admiration at the man capable of giving to such a physique an expression which commands it. The soul is worthily lodged in these powerful frames; and she has the ease and dignity of one accustomed to command, and to command servants able to obey her hests.

Who else could have so animated such forms, that they are imposing, but never heavy? The strong man is made so majestic by his office, that you scarcely feel how strong he is. The wide folds of the drapery, the breadth of light and shade, are great as anything in

”the large utterance of the early G.o.ds.”

'How they read,--these prophets and sibyls! Never did the always-baffled, always reaspiring hope of the finite to compa.s.s the infinite find such expression, except in the _sehnsucht_ of music. They are buried in the volume. They cannot believe that it has not somewhere been revealed, the word of enigma, the link between the human and divine, matter and spirit. Evidently, they hope to find it on the very next page. I have always thought, that clearly enough did nature and the soul's own consciousness respond to the craving for immortality. I have thought it great weakness to need the voucher of a miracle, or of any of those direct interpositions of a divine power, which, in common parlance, are alone styled revelation. When the revelations of nature seemed to me so clear, I had thought it was the weakness of the heart, or the dogmatism of the understanding, which had such need of _a book_. But in these figures of Michel, the highest power seizes upon a scroll, hoping that some other mind may have dived to the depths of eternity for the desired pearl, and enable him, without delay, consciously to embrace the Everlasting Now.

'How fine the attendant intelligences! So youthful and fresh, yet so strong. Some merely docile and reverent, others eager for utterance before the thought be known,--so firm is the trust in its value, so great the desire for sympathy. Others so brilliant in the attention of the inquiring eye, so intelligent in every feature, that they seem to divine the whole, before they hear it.

'Zachariah is much the finer of the two prophets.

'Of the sibyls, the _c.u.maea_ would be disgusting, from her overpowering strength in the feminine form, if genius had not made her tremendous. Especially the bosom gives me a feeling of faintness and aversion I cannot express. The female breast looks made for the temple of sweet and chaste thoughts, while this is so formed as to remind you of the lioness in her lair, and suggest a word which I will not write.

'The _Delphica_ is even beautiful, in Michel's fair, calm, n.o.ble style, like the mother and child asleep in the _Persica_, and _Night_ in the casts I have just seen.

'The _Libica_ is also more beautiful than grand. Her adjuncts are admirable. The elder figure, in the lowest pannel,--with what eyes of deep experience, and still unquenched enthusiasm, he sits meditating on the past! The figures at top are fiery with genius, especially the melancholy one, worthy to lift any weight, if he did but know how to set about it. As it is, all his strength may be wasted, yet he no whit the less n.o.ble.

'But the _Persica_ is my favorite above all. She is the true sibyl. All the grandeur of that wasted frame comes from within. The life of thought has wasted the fresh juices of the body, and hardened the sere leaf of her cheek to parchment; every lineament is sharp, every tint tarnished; her face is seamed with wrinkles,--usually as repulsive on a woman's face as attractive on a man. We usually feel, on looking at a woman, as if Nature had given them their best dower, and Experience could prove little better than a step-dame. But here, her high ambition and devotion to the life of thought gives her the masculine privilege of beauty in advancing years. Read on, hermitess of the world! what thou seekest is not there, yet thou dost not seek in vain.

'The adjuncts to this figure are worthy of it. On the right, below, those two divine sleepers, redeeming human nature, and infolding expectation in a robe of pearly sheen. Here is the sweetness of strength,--honey to the valiant; on the other side, its awfulness,--meat to the strong man. His sleep is more powerful than the waking of myriads of other men. What will he do when he has recruited his strength in this night's slumber? What wilt thou sing of it, wild-haired child of the lyre?

'I admire the heavy fall of the sleeper's luxuriant hair, which reminds one of the final shutting down of night upon a sullen twilight.

'The other figures, too, are full of augury, sad but life-like, in its poetry. On the s.h.i.+eld, how perfectly is the expression of being struck home to the heart given! I wish I could have that s.h.i.+eld, in some shape. Only a single blow was needed; the hand was sure, the breast shrinking, but unresisting. Die, child of my affection, child of my old age!

Let the blood follow to the hilt, for it is the sword of the Lord!

'In looking again, this s.h.i.+eld is on the _Libica_, and that of the _Persica_ represents conquest, not sacrifice.

'Over all these figures broods the spirit of prophecy. You see their sternest deed is under the theocratic form. There is pride in action, but no selfism in these figures.

'When I first came to Michel, I clung to the beautiful Raphael, and feared his Druidical axe. But now, after the sibyls of Michel, it is unsafe to look at those of Raphael; for they seem weak, which is not so, only seems so, beside the sterner ideal.

'The beauty of composition here is great, and you feel that Michel's works are looked at fragment-wise in comparison. Here the eye glides along so naturally, does so easily justice to each part.'

LETTERS.

I fear the remark already made on that susceptibility to details in art and nature which precluded the exercise of Margaret's sound catholic judgment, must be extended to more than her connoisseurs.h.i.+p.

She _had_ a sound judgment, on which, in conversation, she could fall back, and antic.i.p.ate and speak the best sense of the largest company.