ht in the firmament of heaven;"
then follow in their order, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. The name of each planet is expressed by its
mythological representative; the Sun by Apollo, the Moon by Diana:
and over each presides a grand colossal-winged spirit, seated or
reclining on a portion of the zodiac as on a throne. I have selected
two angels to give an idea of this peculiar and poetical treatment.
The union of the theological and the mythological attributes is in
the classical taste of the time, and quite Miltonic. In Raphael's
child-angels, the expression of power and intelligence, as well as
innocence, is quite wonderful; for instance, look at the two angel-
boys, in the Dresden Madonna di San Sisto, and the angels, or
celestial genii, who bear along the Almighty when he appears to Noah.
No one has expressed like Raphael the action of flight, except
perhaps Rembrandt. The angel who descends to crown Santa Felicita
cleaves the air with the action of a swallow: and the angel in
Rembrandt's Tobit soars like a lark with upward motion, spurning the
earth.

Michael Angelo rarely gave wings to his angels; I scarcely recollect
an instance, except the angel in the "Annunciation:" and his
exaggerated human forms, his colossal creatures, in which the idea of
power is conveyed through attitude and muscular action, are, to my
taste, worse than unpleasing. My admiration for this wonderful man
is so profound that I can afford to say this. His angels are
superhuman, but hardly angelic: and while in Raphael's angels we do
not feel the want of wings, we feel while looking at those of Michael
Angelo that not even the "sail-broad vans" with which Satan laboured,
through the surging abyss of chaos could suffice to lift those
Titanic forms from earth, and sustain them in mid-air. The group of
angels over the "Last Judgment," flinging their mighty limbs about,
and those that surround the descending figure of Christ in the
"Conversion of St. Paul," may be referred to here as characteristic
examples. The angels, blowing their trumpets, puff and strain like
so many troopers. Surely this is not angelic: there may be power--
great, imaginative, and artistic power--exhibited in the conception
of form, but in the beings themselves there is more of effort than of
power: serenity, tranquillity, beatitude, ethereal purity, spiritual
grace, are out of the question.

In this passage we may remark an e