the art by which vice is divested of its grossness, but not of its subtle poisons,—­like the New Heloise of Rousseau or the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe,—­the more fatally will it lead astray by the insidious entrance of an evil spirit in the guise of an angel of light.  Art, like literature, is neither good nor evil abstractly, but may become a savor of death unto death, as well as of life unto life.  You cannot extinguish it without destroying one of the noblest developments of civilization; but you cannot have civilization without multiplying the temptations of human society, and hence must be guarded from those destructive cankers which, as in old Rome, eat out the virtues on which the strength of man is based.  The old apostles, and other great benefactors of the world, attached more value to the truths which elevate than to the arts which soften.  It was the noble direction which Michael Angelo gave to art which made him a great benefactor not only of civilization, but also of art, by linking with it the eternal ideas of majesty and dignity, as well as the truths which are taught by divine inspiration,—­another illustration of the profound reverence which the great master minds of the world, like Augustine, Pascal, and Bacon, have ever expressed for the ideas which were revealed by Christianity and the old prophets of Jehovah; ideas which many bright but inferior intellects, in their egotistical arrogance, have sought to subvert.

Yet it was neither as sculptor nor painter that Michael Angelo left the most enduring influence, but as architect.  Painting and sculpture are the exclusive ornaments and possession of the rich and favored.  But architecture concerns all men, and most men have something to do with it in the course of their lives.  What boots it that a man pays two thousand pounds for a picture to be shut up in his library, and probably more valued for its rarity, or from the caprices of fashion, than for its real merits?  But it is something when a nation pays a million for a ridiculous building, without regard to the object for which it is intended,—­to be observed and criticised by everybody and for succeeding generations.  A good picture is the admiration of a few; a magnificent edifice is the pride of thousands.  A picture necessarily cultivates the taste of a family circle; a public edifice educates the minds of millions.  Even the Moses of Michael Angelo is a mere object of interest to those who visit the church of San Pietro in Vincoli; but St. Peter’s is a monument to be seen by large populations from generation to generation.  All London contemplates St. Paul’s Church or the Palace of Westminster, but the National Gallery may be visited by a small fraction of the people only once a year.  Of the thousands who stand before the Tuileries or the Madeleine not one in a hundred has visited the gallery of the Louvre.  What material works of man so grand as those hoary monuments of piety or pride erected three thousand years ago,