which the prophet Jonah sits, descends and breaks the surface at the top, leaving a semicircular compartment on each side of its corbel.  Michelangelo filled these upper spaces with two groups of wrestling angels, the one bearing a huge cross, the other a column, in the air.  The cross and whipping-post are the chief emblems of Christ’s Passion.  The crown of thorns is also there, the sponge, the ladder, and the nails.  It is with no merciful intent that these signs of our Lord’s suffering are thus exhibited.  Demonic angels, tumbling on clouds like Leviathans, hurl them to and fro in brutal wrath above the crowd of souls, as though to demonstrate the justice of damnation.  In spite of a God’s pain and shameful death, mankind has gone on sinning.  The Judge is what the crimes of the world and Italy have made him.  Immediately below the corbel, and well detached from the squadrons of attendant saints, Christ rises from His throne.  His face is turned in the direction of the damned, His right hand is lifted as though loaded with thunderbolts for their annihilation.  He is a ponderous young athlete; rather say a mass of hypertrophied muscles, with the features of a vulgarised Apollo.  The Virgin sits in a crouching attitude at His right side, slightly averting her head, as though in painful expectation of the coming sentence.  The saints and martyrs who surround Christ and His Mother, while forming one of the chief planes in the composition, are arranged in four unequal groups of subtle and surprising intricacy.  All bear the emblems of their cruel deaths, and shake them in the sight of Christ as though appealing to His judgment-seat.  It has been charitably suggested that they intend to supplicate for mercy.  I cannot, however, resist the impression that they are really demanding rigid justice.  S. Bartholomew flourishes his flaying-knife and dripping skin with a glare of menace.  S. Catherine struggles to raise her broken wheel.  S. Sebastian frowns down on hell with a sheaf of arrows quivering in his stalwart arm.  The saws, the carding-combs, the crosses, and the grid-irons, all subserve the same purpose of reminding Christ that, if He does not damn the wicked, confessors will have died with Him in vain.  It is singular that, while Michelangelo depicted so many attitudes of expectation, eagerness, anxiety, and astonishment in the blest, he has given to none of them the expression of gratitude, or love, or sympathy, or shrinking awe.  Men and women, old and young alike, are human beings of Herculean build.  Paradise, according to Buonarroti’s conception, was not meant for what is graceful, lovely, original, and tender.  The hosts of heaven are adult and over-developed gymnasts.  Yet, while we record these impressions, it would be unfair to neglect the spiritual beauty of some souls embracing after long separation in the grave, with folding arms, and clasping hands, and clinging lips.  While painting these, Michelangelo thought peradventure of his father and his brother.