singing, that went down
to brood over the masts of Salamis, was more than morning mist among the
olives; and yet what were the Greek's thoughts of his god of battle? No
spirit power was in the vision; it was a being of clay strength and
human passion, foul, fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms and
vulnerable flesh. Gather what we may of great, from pagan chisel or
pagan dream, and set it beside the orderer of Christian warfare, Michael
the Archangel: not Milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed,"
not even Milton's in kingly treading of the hills of Paradise, not
Raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear, but Perugino's
with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand
fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle binding his undinted
armor; God has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his
limbs, no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine
features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full
of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and
instrument of Omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light,
the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of
hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell
on the far-off sea-shore.

Sec. 21. Conclusion.

It is vain to attempt to pursue the comparison; the two orders of art
have in them nothing common, and the field of sacred history, the intent
and scope of Christian feeling, are too wide and exalted to admit of the
juxtaposition of any other sphere or order of conception; they embrace
all other fields like the dome of heaven. With what comparison shall we
compare the types of the martyr saints, the St. Stephen of Fra
Bartolomeo, with his calm forehead crowned by the stony diadem, or the
St. Catherine of Raffaelle looking up to heaven in the dawn of the
eternal day, with her lips parted in the resting from her pain? or with
what the Madonnas of Francia and Pinturicchio, in whom the hues of the
morning and the solemnity of the eve, the gladness in accomplished
promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced heart, are gathered into one
human lamp of ineffable love? or with what the angel choirs of Angelico,
with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move,
and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of
many suns upon a sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alte