Michael Angelo

Grandeur was Michael Angelo's prevailing sentiment. In his architecture of St. Peter's, he seems to have been limited by the impossibility of arriving to excellence without adopting the ancient styles, and the necessity of attempting something great without them; and to speak with the severity of uncompromising truth he failed. Of what else he did in that science, and he did much, for which he obtained deserved renown, there is neither room nor occasion to speak. In painting and sculpture, if he did not always succeed in embodying his feelings, yet he succeeded more frequently than any other artist since the revival of arts; and, as his power was greater than theirs, so he accomplished greater works. His aim was elevated as that of the giants who warred against the fabled gods; in one respect he was unlike them—he conquered. Majestic and wild as nature in her undescribable sublimity, he achieved with corresponding greatness and beauty. His forms and their intellectual expression are of the highest order. He never did any thing little. All was in harmony with a mind which he created of himself by adding fact to fact, by severe reading, by close observation, by study, by seclusion. He was the quarrier, and architect, and builder-up of his own greatness.