Nor is there evidence that Michael Angelo disdained the creations especially seen in those Gothic monuments which are still the objects of our admiration.  Who does not admire the church architecture of the Middle Ages?  Of its kind it has never been surpassed.  Geometry and art—­the true and the beautiful—­meet.  Nothing ever erected by the hand of man surpasses the more famous cathedrals of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in the richness and variety of their symbolic decorations.  They typify the great ideas of Christianity; they inspire feelings of awe and reverence; they are astonishing structures, in their magnitude and in their effect.  Monuments are they of religious zeal and poetical inspiration,—­the creations of great artists, although we scarcely know their names; adapted to the uses designed; the expression of consecrated sentiments; the marble history of the ages in which they were erected,—­now heavy and sombre when society was enslaved and mournful; and then cheerful and lofty when Christianity was joyful and triumphant.  Who ever was satisfied in contemplating the diversified wonders of those venerable structures?  Who would lose the impression which almost overwhelmed the mind when York minster, or Cologne, or Milan, or Amiens was first beheld, with their lofty spires and towers, their sculptured pinnacles, their flying buttresses, their vaulted roofs, their long arcades, their purple windows, their holy altars, their symbolic carvings, their majestic outlines, their grand proportions!

But beautiful, imposing, poetical, and venerable as are these hoary piles, they are not the all in all of art.  Suppose all the buildings of Europe the last four hundred years had been modelled from these churches, how gloomy would be our streets, how dark and dingy our shops, how dismal our dwellings, how inconvenient our hotels!  A new style was needed, at least as a supplement of the old,—­as lances and shields were giving place to fire-arms, and the line and the plummet for the mariner’s compass; as a new civilization was creating new wants and developing the material necessities of man.

So Michael Angelo arose, and revived the imperishable models of the classical ages,—­to be applied not merely to churches but to palaces, civic halls, theatres, libraries, museums, banks,—­all of which have mundane purposes.  The material world had need of conveniences, as much as the Mediaeval age had need of shrines.  Humanity was to be developed as well as the Deity to be worshipped.  The artist took the broadest views, looking upon Gothic architecture as but one division of art,—­even as truth is greater than any system, and Christianity wider than any sect.  O, how this Shakspeare of art would have smiled on the vague and transcendental panegyrics of Michelet or Ruskin, and other sentimental admirers of an age which never can return!  And how he might have laughed at some modern enthusiasts, who trace religion to the disposition of stones and arches, forgetting that religion is an inspiration which comes from God, and never from the work of man’s hands, which can be only a form of idolatry.