to obey them. But there is a constant struggle for him in a form which is not plastic to his touch. Still his poems are strong in their crabbedness, and stand like granite rocks in the general sweet mush of Italian verse.

Such, then, was Michel Angelo, -sculptor, painter, architect, poet, engineer, and able in all these arts. Nor would it have been possible for him to be so great in any one of them had he not trained his mind to all; for all the arts are but the various articulations of the self-same power, as the fingers are of the hand, and each lends aid to the other. Only by having all can the mind have its full grasp of art. It is too often insisted in our days that a man to be great in one art must devote himself exclusively to that; or if he be solicited by any other, he must merely toy with it. Such was not the doctrine of the artists of old, either in ancient days of Greece or at the epoch of the Renaissance. Phidias was a painter and architect as well as a sculptor, and so were nearly all the men of his time. Giotto, Leonardo, Ghiberti, Michel Angelo, Verrocchio, Cellini, Raffaelle, in a word, all the great men of the glorious age in Italy were accomplished in many arts. They more or less trained themselves in all. It might be said that not a single great man was not versed in more than one art. Thence it was that they derived their power. It does not suffice that the arm alone is strong; the whole body strikes with every blow.

The frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at Rome, and the statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, are the greatest monuments of Michel Angelo's power as an artist. Whatever may be the defects of these great works, they are of a Titanic brood, that have left no successors, as they had no progenitors. They defy criticism, however just, and stand by themselves outside the beaten track of art, to challenge our admiration. So also, despite all his faults and defects, how grand a figure Michel Angelo himself is in history, how high a place he holds! His name itself is a power. He is one of the mighty masters that the world cannot forget. Kings and emperors die and are forgotten, dynasties change and governments fall, -but he, the silent, stern worker, reigns unmoved in the great realm of art.

Let us leave this great presence, and pass into the other splendid chapel of the Medici which adjoins this, and mark the contrast, and see what came of some of the titular monarchs of his time who fretted their brief hour across the stage, and wore their purple, and issued their edicts, and were fawned upon and flattered in their pride of ephemeral power.

Passing across a corridor, you enter this domed chapel or mausoleum and a splendid mausoleum it is. Its shape is octagonal. It is 63 metres in height, or about 200 feet, and is lined throughout with the richest marbles of jasper, coralline,

persicata, chalcedony, mother-of-pearl, agate, giallo

and verde antico, porphyry, lapis - lazuli, onyx, oriental alabaster, and beautiful petrified woods; and its cost was no less than thirty-two millions of francs of to-day. Here were to lie the bodies of the Medici family, in honor of whom it was raised. On each of the eight sides is a vast arch, and inside six of these are six immense sarcophagi, four of red Egyptian granite and two of gray, with the arms of the family elaborately carved upon them, and surmounted with coronets adorned with precious gems. In two of the arches are colossal portrait statues, one of Ferdinand III. in golden bronze, by Pietro Tacca; and the other of Cosimo II. in brown bronze, by John of Bologna, and both in the richest royal robes. The sarcophagi have the names of Ferdinand II., Cosimo III., Francesco I., Cosimo I. All that wealth and taste can do has been done to celebrate and perpetuate the memory of these royal dukes that reigned over Florence in its prosperous days.

And where are the bodies of these royal dukes? Here comes the saddest of stories. When the early bodies were first buried I know not; but in 1791 Ferdinand III. gathered together all the coffins in which they were laid, and had them piled together pell-mell in the subterranean vaults of this chapel, scarcely taking heed to distinguish them one from another; and here they remained, neglected and uncared for, and only protected from plunder by two wooden doors with common

keys, until 1857. Then shame came over those who had the custody of the place, and it was determined to put them in order. In 1818 there had been a rumor that these Medicean coffins had been violated and robbed of all the articles of value which they contained. But little heed was paid to this rumor, and it was not until thirtynine years after that an examination into the real facts was made. It was then discovered that the rumor was well founded. The forty-nine coffins containing the remains of the family were taken down one by one, and a sad state of things was exposed. Some of them had been broken into and plundered, some were the hiding-places of vermin, and such was the nauseous odor they gave forth, that at least one of the persons employed in taking them down lost his life by inhaling it. Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay, had become hideous and noisome. Of many of the ducal family nothing remained but fragments of bones and a handful of dust. But where the hand of the robber had not been, the splendid dresses covered with jewels, the silks and satins wrought over with gold embroidery, the richly chased helmets and swords crusted with gems and gold, still survived, though those who had worn them in their splendid pageants were but dust and crumbling bones within them.

"Here were sands, ignoble things,

Dropped from the ruined sides of kings."

In many cases, where all else that bore the im

press of life had vanished, the hair still remained almost as fresh as ever. Some bodies which had been carefully embalmed were in fair preservation, but some were fearfully altered. Ghastly and grinning skulls were there, adorned with crowns of gold. Dark and parchment-like faces were seen with their golden locks rich as ever, and twisted with gems and pearls and costly nets. The Cardinal Princes still wore their mitres and red cloaks, their purple pianete and glittering rings, their crosses of white enamel, their jacinths and amethysts and sapphires - all had survived their priestly selves. The dried bones of Vittoria della Rovere Montefeltro (whose very name is poetic) were draped in a robe of black silk of exquisite texture, trimmed with black and white lace, while on her breast lay a great golden medal, and on one side were her emblems and on the other her portrait as she was in life, as if to say, "Look on this picture and on this." Alas, poor humanity! Beside her lay, almost a mere skeleton, Anna Luisa, the Electress Palatine of the Rhine, and daughter of Cosimo III., with the electoral crown surmounting her ghastly brow and face of black parchment, a crucifix of silver on her breast, and at her side a medal with her effigy and name; while near her lay her uncle, Francesco Maria, a mere mass of dust and robes and rags. Many had been stripped by profane hands of all their jewels and insignia, and among these were Cosimo I. and II., Eleonora de Toledo, Maria Christina, and others, to the number of twenty. The two bodies