they 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 magnitude after the eye gets accustomed to the vast prop