lict with Christianity itself.

In considering the life and labors of Michael Angelo, then, we are to
examine whether, in the classical glories of antiquity which he
substituted for the Gothic and Mediaeval, he advanced civilization in
the noblest sense; and moreover, whether he carried art to a higher
degree than was ever attained by the Greeks and Romans, and hence became
a benefactor of the world.

In considering these points I shall not attempt a minute criticism of
his works. I can only seize on the great outlines, the salient points of
those productions which have given him immortality. No lecture can be
exhaustive. If it only prove suggestive, it has reached its end.

Michael Angelo stands out in history in the three aspects of sculptor,
painter, and architect; and that too in a country devoted to art, and in
an age when Italy won all her modern glories, arising from the matchless
works which that age produced. Indeed, those works will probably never
be surpassed, since all the energies of a great nation were concentrated
upon their production, even as our own age confines itself chiefly to
mechanical inventions and scientific research and speculation. What
railroads and telegraphs and spindles and chemical tests and compounds
are to us; what philosophy was to the Greeks; what government and
jurisprudence were to the Romans; what cathedrals and metaphysical
subtilties were to the Middle Ages; what theological inquiries were to
the divines of the seventeenth century; what social urbanities and
refinements were to the French in the eighteenth century,--the fine arts
were to the Italians in the sixteenth century: a fact too commonplace to
dwell upon, and which will be conceded when we bear in mind that no age
has been distinguished for everything, and that nations can try
satisfactorily but one experiment at a time, and are not likely to
repeat it with the same enthusiasm. As the mind is unbounded in its
capacities, and our world affords inexhaustible fields of enterprise,
the progress of the race is to be seen in the new developments which
successively appear, but in which only a certain limit has thus far been
reached. Not in absolute perfection in any particular sphere is this
progress seen, but rather in the variety of the experiments. It may be
doubted whether any Grecian edifice will ever surpass the Parthenon in
beauty of proportion or fitness of ornament; or any nude statue show
grace of form more impressi