l! was
clothed in human word before thee.

'One feels so repelled and humbled, on turning from Raphael
to his contemporary, that I could have hated him as a Gentile
Choragus might hate the prophet Samuel. Raphael took us to his
very bosom, as if we had been fit for disciples,--

'"Parting with smiles the hair upon the brow,
And telling me none ever was preferred"

'This man waves his serpent wand over me, and beauty's self
seems no better than a golden calf!

'I could not bear M. De Quincy for intimating that the
archangel Michel could be jealous; yet I can easily see
that he might have given cause, by undervaluing his divine
contemporary. Raphael was so sensuous, so lovely and loving.
All undulates to meet the eye, glides or floats upon the
soul's horizon, as soft as is consistent with perfectly
distinct and filled-out forms. The graceful Lionardo might see
his pictures in moss; the beautiful Raphael on the cloud,
or wave, or foliage; but thou, Michel, didst look straight
upwards to the heaven, and grasp and bring thine down from the
very sun of invention.

'How Raphael revels in the image! His life is all reproduced;
nothing was abstract or conscious. Pantheism, Polytheism,
Greek god of Beauty, Apollo Musagetes,--what need of life
beyond the divine work? "I paint," said he, "from an idea that
comes into my mind."

'But thou, Michel, didst not only feel but see the divine
Ideal. Thine is the conscious monotheism of Jewry. Like thy
own Moses, even on the mount of celestial converse, thou didst
ask thy God to show now his face, and didst write his words,
not in the alphabet of flowers, but on stone tables.

'It is, indeed, the two geniuses of Greece and Jewry, which
are reproduced in these two men. Thaumaturgus nature saw fit
to wait but a very few years before using these moulds again,
in smaller space. Would you read the Bible aright? look at
Michel; the Greek Mythology? look at Raphael. Would you know
how the sublime coexists with the beautiful, or the beautiful
with the sublime? would you see power and truth regnant on the
one side, with beauty and love harmonious and ministrant,
but subordinate; or would you look at the other aspect of
Deity?--study here. Would you open all the founts of marvel,
admiration, and tenderness?--study both.