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stition" could be arrested, his notion was benevolent but not sagacious. However, the craftiest counsellor could not have forseen

the triumphs of Christianity.

I have read you the entire letter. Trajan's reply does honor to his heart. He did all that could be expected of a pagan emperor. As nearly as I recollect, it ran thus:

"Trajan to Pliny, greeting: The course which you adopted, my dear Pliny, in dismissing the cases of those who were charged with being Christians before you, was correct. For no definite rule can be made in such emergencies, which will apply, without discrimination, to every case. Christians must not be looked for and ferreted out: if they are informed against and formally complained of, they must receive punishment. On this condition, however. If any shall deny that he is a Christian and give suitable evidence of the fact, as by praying to our deities, although previously suspected, he must after these signs of penitence be pardoned and discharged.

"No anonymous accusations should receive the slightest attention. To give it to them would be a pernicious example, unworthy of our age.'

SONNET TO THE AMERICAN MUSE.

BY L. F. ROBINSON.

Thou art not Clio, with the harp and scroll,
And Grecian draperies flowing round thy form;
Inspiring fancies, roseate and warm,
Which, fed on passion, wither in the soul.
Daughter of Heaven and Earth! thine anthems roll
When on this aged mountain bursts the storm,
And pale-lipped waves yon rustling lake deform;
And, when the rocking blast has reached its goal,
Thy rainbow tiara in heaven is seen.
Thou dwellest too by fountains and in bowers;
A gentle sprite, with eyes of fire-fly sheen
And wild-vine tresses, wreath and braid of flowers;
In drapery of summer green bedight,

With zephyr voice, and zone with dew-drops bright.

Monte Video, Hartford county, Ct.

THE LAST JUDGMENT OF MICHAEL ANGELO BUONAROTTI.

BY L'A.

There was a sacred cave in ancient Greece, which rendered every one who entered it, melancholy for the rest of his life. It seems to me that upon a contemplative and dreamy temperament, a sojourn in Rome must have a somewhat similar effect. I remember well and indeed feel to this moment the change it wrought on my own imagination. When before my arrival there, I looked upon the great monuments of art and nature, I thought only of their vastness and their eternity. Since that time, I never leave the contemplation of them, without thinking of the day when the lizard or the owl shall rear its young amid their ruined walls, or the archangel's trump confound them in one universal wreck.

For the two objects around which I most lingered while in Rome, were the Palace of the Cæsars and the altar-piece of the Sistine Chapel. I used to take my book of a quiet, balmy noon, and moving aside the ivy and the shrubs that straggle around, ascend the staircase of the "Golden House," to indulge a lonely revery. The very light of heaven seemed sanctified by the associations of the spot-it was so soft, so golden-just such as one would have repose the livelong day upon one's grave.

Of the many hours spent before Angelo's Last Judgment, I propose to speak to you in the few following pages, and yet I hardly know how to beg excuse for so presumptuous an undertaking. As I sit and gaze on the mighty outlines, daguerreotyped months since upon my soul, while warming fancy, like the artist's lamp, elicits those colors, vivid as when they first blushed into being from the master's hand, I am overwhelmed; as disheartened as one might feel after attempting to paraphrase Paradise Lost. But at the same time, those who never knew the original may tolerate a bold yet honest imitation. It is for such that I write.

Michael Angelo's Last Judgment bears the same relation to his other productions in its own department of art, that the first English epic does to L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. When your friend asks if you have read Milton, he means, of course, Paradise Lost. When he asks if you have studied Michael Angelo, he would know whether you have entered the Sistine Chapel.

The famous work occupies an extent of wall very much larger than the entire front of an ordinary three-story house, and took seven years in its execution. It is in fresco, but being now about three centuries old, it has lost much of its original brightness, although the outline and expression of the figures are in most in

stances, quite easily distinguishable. From the immense size of the painting, and the comparative smallness as well as bad position of the windows, it is impossible to secure a proper distribution of the light, but perhaps you hardly feel this inconvenience. The groups must be studied, each by itself, like the successive cantos of a poem, and their unity is contemplated rather by the mental than the bodily eye.

One scarce knows which to admire most in this vast workthe sublimity of conception or that of execution. I do love those grand, sweeping lines of Angelo and Rubens, betraying so certainly their master's hand, as her majestic step revealed the goddess-mother to her son.

Et vera incessu patuit Dea.

It is of such that the high Designer of the universe has composed his own great masterpieces. The mountain slope, the long, swelling wave of ocean, the swoop of the eagle are all the sublimer models of these sublime imitations. And the same difficulties of position that most painters shun as fatal, Angelo seems to revel in. In that colossal figure at the right hand of the Virgin, bending forward to look upon the Judge's countenance, the arm, uplifted in conscious awe, and the advanced leg are magnificent triumphs in the art of fore-shortening. There is not one group there, whose astonishing power of drawing and composition would not yield its author an immortality of fame, though the remainder of the mighty work were completely obliterated. You may examine each countenance and you will find not a line but what contributes to the one expression of joy or grief or awe or heart-rending suspense. The attitudes are of the most dignified or the most terrific character, eloquent interpreters of the deep passion revolving within. The difficulties of perspective, too, vastly aggravated by the height of the picture, are in general most successfully overcome. Amid all the confusion which at first sight seems to pervade the multitude of figures on either hand of the Christ, there yet reigns a most admirable unity. The eye is led naturally from group to group, as from link to link in a perfect chain.

A little above the centre of the painting, stands the colossal figure of the Christ, as Judge of men, with the Holy Mother, in a halfsitting posture, near his right hand. Immediately below the cloud on which these two figures rest, are the angels of the Judgment, blowing that seven-fold blast, whose tremendous echoes startle into life the slumbering dead. On the left hand of the spectator, near the lower corner, the graves are opening, and their ghastly tenants rise slowly to the light. Some come forth, mere vivified skeletons -others, clothed with flesh and with the habiliments of the tomb; a horrid group! Here and there are forms, with difficulty extricating themselves from the superincumbent earth, as in Milton's description of the animals in the sixth day's creation

The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared
The tawny lion, pawing to get free

His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds.

The libbard and the tiger, as the mole

Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw

In hillocks.

One sits tearing convulsively the tight bandages from his limbs; another, forgetful entirely of his own fate, is gazing on the face of the Judge, and another still, like a half-waked sleeper, bewildered with the sudden and awful scene, lays his hand unconsciously upon his companion and prepares to follow him. In the centre, seated on an overturned tombstone, a skeleton stares out directly upon you. Those eyeless sockets and fleshless cheeks are already instinct with a life. The spectre seems to be listening to the dreadful clangor of the trumpets above, and biting its bony fingers, it quakes with very horror. O! your heart's blood curdles to look at it! A little to the right, are two demons seizing a poor wretch before he has half risen from his grave and dragging him to their flaming hell. Down the vaulted way which leads thither, figures of men are solemnly moving; and just at the entrance a fiend squats with his long, ape-like hands resting on his knees, and black, distorted form thrown out full by the lurid glare behind. He seems in extasy at the prospect of enlarging the society of his abode. When that awful day does come, what a carnival will there be in hell!

But from this group of miserable souls, some few are withdrawing into the upper air. In the distance is seen a figure, clothed in flowing drapery, soaring majestically heavenward, with eyes uplifted toward the beaming glories of its future home. Others rise painfully and slow, half doubting their acceptance, while others still are contending with demons who seek to drag them to their infernal abode. But good angels dispute the precious prize, and bear it on high. These souls are they of whom the scripture speaks; "saved as by fire." The dreadful struggle is carried on in mid-air. Here you see fiends twisting their claws into the long, sweeping hair of some unhappy victim and drawing him down headlong, while avenging angels, with faces of mingled severity and compassion, precipitate his fall. There is one figure, that of a young man whom the demons have grasped around the feet, which is perfectly horrible to see. He offers not the least resistance. The awful voice of the judgment trump seems almost to have shattered his intellect, and he looks at you now with a countenance of idiotic despair.

And now look yonder at that draperied form, with hands clasped and eyes upraised in such tranquil extasy. She has left earth and its corruption behind, and is rising steadily as a rising star. Her life here below has been one of earnest, hopeful piety, gliding noiselessly along, like Siloa's hidden brook, "fast by the oracles

of God." O! there are such spirits yet on earth, few though they be, and despised and rejected of men-the precious ten, for whom God delays righteous judgment on the world-the hostages of heaven in this camp of sin. In darkness and spiritual loneliness, and "much tribulation," they sit here, waiting patiently though with tears for that great hour of their liberation; like Peter and John, when "the angel of the Lord opened the prison-doors by night, and brought them forth."

Below sits one, regarding her triumphant flight; and what soulcrushing despair is painted in that countenance! Perhaps they were companions in life, and as they walked at eventide together, talked solemnly about this very scene. The heart seems bursting at the thought of eternal separation from the cherished object of its earthly love, but separation is inevitable. "In that day, the one shall be taken and the other left."

On the right hand of the Virgin, stands the assembly of the good. Here are a group gathering around a newly risen saint and welcoming him to their society. Others remain wrapt in grateful contemplation of the mercy that brought them thither, while a few are seen looking down upon the troubled and affrighted wretches against whom the Judge, with uplifted arm is uttering the dreadful curse. There is an air of blended pity and consent in their countenances as if they would even be themselves accursed for their brethren's sake. A mother looks down upon the child of her midnight watchings and prayers and takes one yearning farewell, to be repeated no more forever. One manly figure, the most prominent of all, has pressed aside the crowd and is gazing, transfixed, upon the awful features of the Christ. There, sublime, with right arm extended as if to hurl the thunderbolt on the devoted beings below, stands the Incarnate God. But in his visage, the deity shines undimmed. He has left his humanity, in the sepulchre of his three days' rest. And yet the remembrance of Gethsemane and Calvary seems to quicken his holy wrath as he regards the despisers and mockers of their heart-wrung agonies. The gigantic form, drawn back in an attitude of indignation, every limb and feature pregnant with the spirit of a God, seems as near the inef fable original as a mortal might look upon and not die!

Near the Judge, stands the multitude of those who have suffered unto the death for his name's sake-"the noble army of martyrs." There you see the beautiful Saint Catharine, leaning upon the wheel on which she breathed forth in torture, her heavenly spirit ; tall, stalwart, forms of men. whom the rack and the cross brought unresistingly to an early and agonizing death; others, who were flay. ed alive or burnt. And above the whole, amid clouds of glory, float angel forms, bearing the instruments of the Saviour's passion-the cruel cross, the nails, the reed, the bitter sponge.

The group of figures in the lower corner, at the spectator's right hand, is in some particulars the most effective of all. It is that of which I spoke incidentally above, upon which the Judge is

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