’The Libica is also more beautiful than grand.  Her adjuncts are admirable.  The elder figure, in the lowest pannel,—­with what eyes of deep experience, and still unquenched enthusiasm, he sits meditating on the past!  The figures at top are fiery with genius, especially the melancholy one, worthy to lift any weight, if he did but know how to set about it.  As it is, all his strength may be wasted, yet he no whit the less noble.

’But the Persica is my favorite above all.  She is the true sibyl.  All the grandeur of that wasted frame comes from within.  The life of thought has wasted the fresh juices of the body, and hardened the sere leaf of her cheek to parchment; every lineament is sharp, every tint tarnished; her face is seamed with wrinkles,—­usually as repulsive on a woman’s face as attractive on a man.  We usually feel, on looking at a woman, as if Nature had given them their best dower, and Experience could prove little better than a step-dame.  But here, her high ambition and devotion to the life of thought gives her the masculine privilege of beauty in advancing years.  Read on, hermitess of the world! what thou seekest is not there, yet thou dost not seek in vain.

’The adjuncts to this figure are worthy of it.  On the right, below, those two divine sleepers, redeeming human nature, and infolding expectation in a robe of pearly sheen.  Here is the sweetness of strength,—­honey to the valiant; on the other side, its awfulness,—­meat to the strong man.  His sleep is more powerful than the waking of myriads of other men.  What will he do when he has recruited his strength in this night’s slumber?  What wilt thou sing of it, wild-haired child of the lyre?

    ’I admire the heavy fall of the sleeper’s luxuriant hair,
    which reminds one of the final shutting down of night upon a
    sullen twilight.

’The other figures, too, are full of augury, sad but life-like, in its poetry.  On the shield, how perfectly is the expression of being struck home to the heart given!  I wish I could have that shield, in some shape.  Only a single blow was needed; the hand was sure, the breast shrinking, but unresisting.  Die, child of my affection, child of my old age!  Let the blood follow to the hilt, for it is the sword of the Lord!

    ’In looking again, this shield is on the Libica, and that of
    the Persica represents conquest, not sacrifice.

    ’Over all these figures broods the spirit of prophecy.  You
    see their sternest deed is under the theocratic form.  There is
    pride in action, but no selfism in these figures.

’When I first came to Michel, I clung to the beautiful Raphael, and feared his Druidical axe.  But now, after the sibyls of Michel, it is unsafe to look at those of Raphael; for they seem weak, which is not so, only seems so, beside the sterner ideal.

’The beauty of composition here is great, and you feel that Michel’s works are looked at fragment-wise in comparison.  Here the eye glides along so naturally, does so easily justice to each part.’

LETTERS.