great truth which he was searching for. By what signs do we recognize Joel as a seer? Does he not represent rather the cool, patient, and methodical observer, the calm and lucid intellect in which the laws of nature are reflected as in a mirror? Jeremiah, also, that colossus, whom mute sorrow overwhelms, has nothing of a visionary; he is a logician and a patriot, to whom the philosophy of history has demonstrated that his country is going speedily to destruction and will not stop short of it; his despair is only too intelligent and well-grounded.

Lastly, it is not to respond to the appeal of a voice from on high that Ezekiel turns around with such impetuosity; it is, visibly, to silence with a crushing answer an opponent who has dared to interrupt him. In the case of each one of them, cerebral activity is depicted in its fulness and at the decisive instant. A single descriptive title, then, is appropriate to these imperial figures: it is genius conceiving its ideal, elaborating its work, attaining its object.

The Sibyls are more conformed to the character of their sacred function. There is a single exception,-the old Cumaan, whose eyes are inflamed with deciphering an obscure page. But she is less a priestess than a magician; she is the servant of Hecate, and not of Apollo; the witches of Macbeth descend from her. The others have manifestly received divine inspiration. It was not in the land of Judea, however, that they received it. By the expression of their countenances and the style of their apparel, they are all pagans. And shall we not see in these beautiful soothsayers the daughters of Hellas and of Ionia; in this Erythoean, so proud, so elegant, so chaste; in this half nude Lybian, twisting her body around so grandly upon her hips; in this Delphic sibyl, eager, high-strung creature, whose fateful glance assures us that it is truly a divinity who possesses

her and exhausts her?

After such a profusion of decorative wealth, Michael Angelo had not even yet spoken his last word. It remained for him to call into being a whole world of figures, that throng of youths who, under the form of supports and of caryatides, make the

framework of the numerous compartments of the vault. Since the days of antiquity, since the age of Praxiteles and of Scopas, there had not been seen the equal of these youths, in whom life is beaming in all its brightness. Slender, agile, vigorous, incomparable in their grace of bearing and their audacity, one never tires of admiring them. By a kind of æsthetic paradox, they owe to two different arts the secret of their beauty. Are they frescoes or marbles? One hesitates for a moment. Painting alone could give them the flesh tint. But what but the hand of a sculptor could impress upon them that plastic accent?

And now the work is finished, the cycle is completed. If one tries to sum up the impressions he has received beneath that famous vault, the one word he finds is that of grandeur. But a grandeur such as the history of art has known few examples of, -a grandeur which attains to the sublime without effort, a grandeur quite spontaneous, quite natural, and which the artist seems to have achieved as if it were play.

What a contrast when one turns to the high wall where, twenty-two years afterward, Michael Angelo, taking up his pencil again, painted the Last Judgment.

Surely, if there is any subject suited to the powers of the artist who painted the Genesis and the Prophets, it is the Dies ira, it is the final appearance of souls before the tribunal of God. The moral idea which penetrates all Christianity illumines, indeed, the terrible epilogue of the human drama. But at the time of the Renaissance, few men were more sincere idealists than Michael Angelo. An assiduous reader of the Bible, a fervent admirer of Dante and of Petrarch, a zealous disciple of Marsilius Ficinus, an enthusiastic votary of Savonarola, the mystical lover of Victoria Colonna, he joined to a very pure and vital religious faith a passionate devotion to Platonic doctrines. Every one of his works bears witness of a mind preoccupied with the things of religion, of intellect; every one bears the impress of profound thought; every one expresses a sadness, an inquietude, a hope, an aspiration, a revolt,-in a word, an idea. No artist, then, was better fitted than he to treat a subject in which the soul

alone is interested. And, nevertheless, upon the immense fresco, one sees nothing but bodies,-three hundred athletic, nude bodies, ascending to heaven or precipitated to the infernal regions, exhibiting the most violent movements, the most strained postures, and the boldest foreshortening. In the scenes of the Last Day, the painter seems to have seen nothing but a subject suited to display his prodigious knowledge of perspective and of anatomy, an occasion for the exhibition of all the shapes which the framework of the bones and the play of the muscles could give to the human being in all possible positions. Gazing in wonder on this spectacle, Delacroix said, "The Last Judgment is the carnival of the flesh." The expression is appropriate, but one has the right to be surprised that the artist should chose this occasion to celebrate a carnal apotheosis.

Further, it is to be said that the work has a certain monotony, which the blackened surface of the fresco makes still more apparent. The Christ and the Apostles, the angels and the demons, the martyrs and the patriarchs, the elect and the reprobate are all of herculean type; all resemble one another in the excess and ostentation of their physical force. In vain would one seek among them for those fine traits of spiritual beauty, of moral delicacy, of mystic beatitude, in depicting which the religious art of the fourteenth century excelled.

The Saviour himself, whom Michael Angelo has represented as beardless, contrary to sacred tradition,-is devoid of nobility; his low brow, his prominent jaw, his sturdy waist, his protuberant muscles, give him the appearance of an Olympic wrestler. And the Apostles who surround him, struggle and tumble and strain like so many gymnasts. Everywhere one perceives a striving to exhibit technical ability, a yielding to the attraction of some difficulty to be overcome. Science has nearly suppressed the poet and the thinker within the artist. Therefore this colossal painting is powerless to move and to persuade us.

But one quality lifts it above all our criticisms, the quality which in art is supreme, namely, style. Michael Angelo does not ask for our admiration; he compels it, he lays hold upon it.

Before those superb groups, inspired by the Apocalypse and the Inferno of Dante, the moment comes when the spectator no longer reasons; he is overmastered. How can he help being carried away by that prodigious flight of angels bearing up to heaven the Cross of Calvary and the pillar of the flagellation, by the stupor of the dead whom the trumpet has awakened and who are shaking off their shrouds, by the terror of the damned whom a demon is driving, with blows of the oar, to the infernal boat? Was ever style more vigorous, more lofty, more imposing? Had it no other merit, the work would be absolutely unique in this.

Upon the side walls of the Chapel, the Tuscan and Umbrian masters of the fifteenth century, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Pinturicchio, Cosimo Roselli, Perugino, and Luca Signorelli have represented the classic scenes of the Bible. When one has but just torn himself away from the embrace of Michael Angelo, the contemplation of these figures brings a delicious sense of repose. Sincerity of inspiration, play of fancy in pictorial invention, perfect alliance of gracefulness and nobility, tranquil joy in giving expression to life and disclosing beauty,-this is what we find everywhere in these charming pictures in which the Renaissance offers us its earliest flower.

THE MATTER OF THE PLAY

MINNIE MADDERN FISKE, New York.

It is doubtful if there is any other feature of public life in this country that at all compares with the theatre in the number of persons interested in it. It would seem that a majority of the people habitually or at least occasionally go to the theatre, for everywhere this place of amusement is usually thronged. There are thousands of theatres now where there were but hundreds a generation or so ago, the increase in their number seemingly being even relatively larger than the vast increase in population; and one may arrive at some idea of the matter by observation in any large city, where night apparently finds almost everybody theatre bound. The scenes in New York are typical in this respect. During the day the congestion of people is in the business districts, which at night are dark and deserted, while the theatre districts are ablaze with light, brilliant with color, and teeming with life. Thus the play would seem to be the common

source of amusement.

"Amusement" is the word, although that word may have different shades of meaning for various persons. A great majority of theatregoers no doubt may be classed in two general divisions. One division, probably the larger, is composed of persons, strained or wearied by the struggles of the day, that rush to the theatre for mere relaxation. They do not care particularly what they are to see at the theatre if the play or the performance is of a character to make them forget for the moment, without taxing

Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.