and still magnificent in their very ruins!  How imposing are the pyramids, the Coliseum, and the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages!  And even when architecture does not rear vaulted roofs and arches and pinnacles, or tower to dazzling heights, or inspire reverential awe from the associations which cluster around it, how interesting are even its minor triumphs!  Who does not stop to admire a beautiful window, or porch, or portico?  Who does not criticise his neighbor’s house, its proportions, its general effect, its adaptation to the uses designed?  Architecture appeal to the common eye, and have reference to the necessities of man, and sometimes express the consecrated sentiments of an age or a nation.  Nor can it be prostituted, like painting and sculpture; it never corrupts the mind, and sometimes inspires it; and if it makes an appeal to the senses or the imagination, it is to kindle perceptions of the severe beauty of geometrical forms.

Whoever, then, has done anything in architecture has contributed to the necessities of man, and stimulated an admiration for what is venerable and magnificent.  Now Michael Angelo was not only the architect of numerous palaces and churches, but also one of the principal architects of that great edifice which is, on the whole, the noblest church in Christendom,—­a perpetual marvel and study; not faultless, but so imposing that it will long remain, like the old temple of Ephesus, one of the wonders of the world.  He completed the church without great deviation from the plan of the first architect, Bramante, whom he regarded as the greatest architect that had lived,—­altering Bramante’s plans from a Latin to a Greek cross, the former of which was retained after Michael Angelo’s death.  But it is the interior, rather than the exterior of St. Peter’s, which shows its vast superiority over all other churches for splendor and effect, and surprises all who are even fresh from Cologne and Milan and Westminster.  It impresses us like a wonder of nature rather than as the work of man,—­a great work of engineering as well as a marvel of majesty and beauty.  We are surprised to see so vast a structure, covering nearly five acres, so elaborately finished, nothing neglected; the lofty walls covered with precious marbles, the side chapels filled with statues and monuments, the altars ornamented with pictures,—­and those pictures not painted in oil, but copied in mosaic, so that they will neither decay nor fade, but last till destroyed by violence.  What feelings overpower the poetic mind when the glories of that interior first blaze upon the brain; what a world of brightness, softness, and richness; what grandeur, solidity, and strength; what unnumbered treasures around the altars; what grand mosaics relieve the height of the wondrous dome,—­larger than the Pantheon, rising two hundred feet from the intersection of those lofty and massive piers which divide transept from choir and nave; what effect of