are really demanding rigid justice. S. Bartholomew flourishes his
flaying-knife and dripping skin with a glare of menace. S. Catherine
struggles to raise her broken wheel. S. Sebastian frowns down on hell
with a sheaf of arrows quivering in his stalwart arm. The saws, the
carding-combs, the crosses, and the grid-irons, all subserve the same
purpose of reminding Christ that, if He does not damn the wicked,
confessors will have died with Him in vain. It is singular that, while
Michelangelo depicted so many attitudes of expectation, eagerness,
anxiety, and astonishment in the blest, he has given to none of them
the expression of gratitude, or love, or sympathy, or shrinking awe.
Men and women, old and young alike, are human beings of Herculean
build. Paradise, according to Buonarroti's conception, was not meant
for what is graceful, lovely, original, and tender. The hosts of
heaven are adult and over-developed gymnasts. Yet, while we record
these impressions, it would be unfair to neglect the spiritual beauty
of some souls embracing after long separation in the grave, with
folding arms, and clasping hands, and clinging lips. While painting
these, Michelangelo thought peradventure of his father and his
brother.

The two planes which I have attempted to describe occupy the upper and
the larger portion of the composition. The third in order is made up
of three masses. In the middle floats a band of Titanic cherubs,
blowing their long trumpets over earth and sea to wake the dead.
Dramatically, nothing can be finer than the strained energy and
superhuman force of these superb creatures. Their attitudes compel our
imagination to hear the crashing thunders of the trump of doom. To the
left of the spectator are souls ascending to be judged, some floating
through vague ether, enwrapped with grave-clothes, others assisted by
descending saints and angels, who reach a hand, a rosary, to help the
still gross spirit in its flight. To the right are the condemned,
sinking downwards to their place of torment, spurned by seraphs,
cuffed by angelic grooms, dragged by demons, hurling, howling, huddled
in a mass of horror. It is just here, and still yet farther down, that
Michelangelo put forth all his power as a master of expression. While
the blessed display nothing which is truly proper to their state of
holiness and everlasting peace, the damned appear in every realistic
aspect of most stringent agony and terror. The colossal forms of fles