Michael Angelo Buonarroti—­one of the Great Lights of the new civilization—­may stand as the most fitting representative of reviving art in Europe; also as an illustrious example of those virtues which dignify intellectual pre-eminence.  He was superior, in all that is sterling and grand in character, to any man of his age,—­certainly in Italy; exhibiting a rugged, stern greatness which reminds us of Dante, and of other great benefactors; nurtured in the school of sorrow and disappointment, leading a checkered life, doomed to envy, ingratitude, and neglect; rarely understood, and never fully appreciated even by those who employed and honored him.  He was an isolated man; grave, abstracted, lonely, yet not unhappy, since his world was that of glorious and exalting ideas, even those of grace, beauty, majesty, and harmony,—­the world which Plato lived in, and in which all great men live who seek to rise above the transient, the false, and puerile in common life.  He was also an original genius, remarkable in everything he attempted, whether as sculptor, painter, or architect, and even as poet.  He saw the archetypes of everything beautiful and grand, which are invisible except to those who are almost divinely gifted; and he had the practical skill to embody them in permanent forms, so that all ages may study those forms, and rise through them to the realms in which his soul lived.

Michael Angelo not only created, but he reproduced.  He reproduced the glories of Grecian and Roman art.  He restored the old civilization in his pictures, his statues, and his grand edifices.  He revived a taste for what is imperishable in antiquity.  As such he is justly regarded as an immortal benefactor; for it is art which gives to nations culture, refinement, and the enjoyment of the beautiful.  Art diverts the mind from low and commonplace pursuits, exalts the imagination, and makes its votary indifferent to the evils of life.  It raises the soul into regions of peace and bliss.

But art is most ennobling when it is inspired by lofty and consecrated sentiments,—­like those of religion, patriotism, and love.  Now ancient art was consecrated to Paganism.  Of course there were noble exceptions; but as a general rule temples were erected in honor of heathen deities.  Statues represented mere physical strength and beauty and grace.  Pictures portrayed the charms of an unsanctified humanity.  Hence ancient art did very little to arrest human degeneracy; facilitated rather than retarded the ruin of states and empires, since it did not stimulate the virtues on which the strength of man is based:  it did not check those depraved tastes and habits which are based on egotism.

Now the restorers of ancient art cannot be said to have contributed to the moral elevation of the new races, unless they avoided the sensualism of Greece and Rome, and appealed purely to those eternal ideas which the human mind, even under Pagan influences, sometimes conceived, and which do not conflict with Christianity itself.