me dry, we fear
that the fire of enthusiasm is extinguished in us, without which the
faculty of thinking can only serve to disgust us with life.

Chapter iv.

But Good Friday soon restored to Lord Nelville all those religious
emotions, the want of which he so much regretted on the preceding days.
The seclusion of Corinne was about to terminate; he anticipated the
happiness of seeing her again: the sweet expectations of tender
affection accord with piety; it is only a factious, worldly life, that
is entirely hostile to it. Oswald repaired to the Sixtine Chapel to hear
the celebrated _miserere_, so much talked of all over Europe. He arrived
thither whilst it was yet day, and beheld those celebrated paintings of
Michael Angelo, which represent the Last Judgment, with all the terrible
power of the subject and the talent which has handled it. Michael Angelo
was penetrated with the study of Dante; and the painter, in imitation of
the poet, represents mythological beings in the presence of Jesus
Christ; but he always makes Paganism the evil principle, and it is under
the form of demons that he characterises the heathen fables. On the
vault of the chapel are represented the prophets, and the sybils called
in testimony by the Christians,

Teste David cum Sibylla.

A crowd of angels surround them; and this whole vault, painted thus,
seems to bring us nearer to heaven, but with a gloomy and formidable
aspect. Hardly does daylight penetrate the windows, which cast upon the
pictures shadow rather than light. The obscurity enlarges those figures,
already so imposing, which the pencil of Michael Angelo has traced; the
incense, whose perfume has a somewhat funereal character, fills the air
in this enclosure, and every sensation is prelusive to the most profound
of all--that which the music is to produce.

Whilst Oswald was absorbed by the reflections which every object that
surrounded him gave birth to, he saw Corinne, whose presence he had not
hoped to behold so soon, enter the women's gallery, behind the grating
which separated it from that of the men. She was dressed in black, all
pale with absence, and trembled so when she perceived Oswald, that she
was obliged to lean on the balustrade for support as she advanced; at
this moment the _miserere_ began.

The voices, perfectly trained in this ancient song, proceeded from a
gallery at the commencement of the vault; the singers are not seen; the
music seems to hover