“Love betters what is best,
    Even here below, but more in heaven above."[8]

So he put into a pagan fancy a new and higher meaning.

[Footnote 8:  one of Michelangelo’s sonnets translated by Wordsworth.]

To understand fully the qualities of this work of art, one ought to see it from many points of view, and study the lines.  The long curve of the right arm follows the curve of the right leg from hip to knee.  The bend of the left arm repeats the line made by the bend of the left leg.  The two extended arms together form a long line arching like the curve of a bow.

From every standpoint all the lines are beautiful and harmonious.  This was the secret the Greeks had taught the young Italian sculptor.  In other respects he was entirely original.  Cupid, like David, is in an attitude of action.  In another moment he will move.  This was quite different from the Greek sculpture, which always gives an impression of repose.

NOTE.—­There is a difference of opinion among critics as to the subject of the statue at South Kensington.  Heath Wilson considered it an Apollo.  The writer has followed Symonds in calling it Cupid.

     The size of the statue may be calculated from the foot rule
     which lies across the pedestal in the picture.

IV

MOSES

In Michelangelo’s statue of Moses the great Hebrew leader is represented at the height of his career.  He was a prophet, a poet, a military commander, and a statesman.  The story of his life will show how all these qualities could be combined in one person.

At the time of his birth his people were in slavery to the Egyptians, who cruelly oppressed them.  Their numbers were increasing so rapidly that it was feared they would soon outnumber their masters.  So the command went forth to drown every boy baby.  Now the mother of Moses had no mind to lose her boy, and “when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and she put the child therein and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.  And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to him."[9]

[Footnote 9:  Exodus, chapter ii. verses 3, 4, Revised Version.]

Then a strange thing happened.  The princess came to the river with her maids for a bath, and finding the babe, was touched by his cries.  The sister came up as if by chance, and asked if she should seek a Hebrew nurse for the child, and when the princess said Yes, she went straight for her mother.

So Moses was adopted by an Egyptian princess, yet he was nurtured in infancy by his own mother.  This explains why, with all the Egyptian learning acquired at court, he had still the religious training of a Jew, and when he grew to manhood he was full of sympathy for the wrongs of his people.  One day he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, and in his wrath he slew the Egyptian on the spot.  News of the deed came to Pharaoh the king, and Moses fled into a place called Midian.  Here for forty years he lived a quiet pastoral life as a shepherd for Jethro, whose daughter he had married.