preserved elsewhere. Of these
reproductions the best is generally considered to be that of Guercino's
'Saint Petronilla,' at the end of the right aisle of the tribune.

Debrosses praises these mosaic altar-pieces extravagantly, and even
expresses the opinion that they are probably superior in point of colour
to the originals from which they are copied. In execution they are
certainly wonderful, and many a stranger looks at them and passes on,
believing them to be oil-paintings. They possess the quality of being
imperishable and beyond all influence of climate or dampness, and they
are masterpieces of mechanical workmanship. But many will think them
hard and unsympathetic in outline, and decidedly crude in colour. Much
wit has been manufactured by the critics at the expense of Guido Reni's
'Michael,' for instance, and as many sharp things could be said about a
good many other works of the same kind in the church. Yet, on the whole,
they do not destroy the general harmony. Big as they are, when they are
seen from a little distance they sink into mere insignificant patches of
colour, all but lost in the deep richness of the whole.

As for the statues and monuments, between the 'Pieta' of Michelangelo
and Bracci's horrible tomb of Benedict the Fourteenth, there is the step
which, according to Tom Paine, separates the sublime from the
ridiculous. That very witty saying has in it only just the small
ingredient of truth without which wit remains mere humour. Between the
ridiculous and the sublime there may sometimes be, indeed, but one step
in the execution; but there is always the enormous moral distance which
separates real feeling from affectation--the gulf which divides, for
instance, Bracci's group from Michelangelo's.

[Illustration: PIETA OF MICHELANGELO]

The 'Pieta' is one of the great sculptor's early works. It is badly
placed. It is dwarfed by the heavy architecture above and around it. It
is insulted by a pair of hideous bronze cherubs. There is a manifest
improbability in the relative size of the figure of Christ and that of
the Blessed Virgin. Yet in spite of all, it is one of the most beautiful
and touching groups in the whole world, and by many degrees the best
work of art in the great church. Michelangelo was a man of the strongest
dramatic instinct even in early youth, and when he laid his hand to the
marble and cut his 'Pieta' he was in deep sympathy with the supreme
drama of man's history. He found in t