And only here, the building of St. Peter's. What other things I hitherto have done Have fallen from me, are no longer mine;

MICHAEL ANGELO.

'Tis an old habit.

By promises of ease, or wealth, or honor, Till I behold the finished dome uprise

Complete, as now I see it in my thought.

BENVENUTO.

And will you paint no more?

At Setignano, the stone-mason's wife;
For the first sounds I heard were of the chisel
Chipping away the stone.

No one shall draw me from it, or persuade me,

No more.

BENVENUTO.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Sculpture is more divine, and more like Nature,
That fashions all her works in high relief,
And that is sculpture. This vast ball, the Earth,
Was moulded out of clay, and baked in fire;
Men, women, and all animals that breathe
Are statues, and not paintings. Even the plants,
The flowers, the fruits, the grasses, were first sculp-
tured,

And colored later. A shadow merely.

Painting is a lie,

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Truly, as you say, Sculpture is more than painting. It is greater To raise the dead to life than to create Phantoms that seem to live. The most majestic Of the three sister arts is that which builds; The eldest of them all, to whom the others Are but the hand-maids and the servitors, Being but imitation, not creation. Henceforth I dedicate myself to her.

BENVENUTO.

And no more from the marble hew those forms That fill us all with wonder?

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Many statues
Their station

Will there be room for in my work
Already is assigned them in my mind.
But things move slowly. There are hindrances,
Want of material, want of means, delays
And interruptions, endless interference
Of Cardinal Commissioners, and disputes
And jealousies of artists, that annoy ine.
But I will persevere until the work
Is wholly finished, or till I sink down
Surprised by death, that unexpected griest
Who waits for no man's leisure, but steps in,
Unasked and unannounced, to put a stop
To all our occupations and designs.
And then perhaps I may go back to Florence;
This is my answer to Duke Cosimo.

That Topolino sent you from Carrara. He is a judge of marble.

With it he sent me something of his making,
A Mercury, with long body and short legs,
A messenger of the gods could have short legs,
As if by any possibility
It was no more like Mercury than you are,
But rather like those little plaster figures
That peddlers hawk about the villages
As images of saints. But luckily
For Topolino, there are many people
Who see no difference between what is best
And what is only good, or not even good;
So that poor artists stand in their esteem
On the same level with the best, or higher.

URBINO.

Eccellenza,

I must then serve another master. MICHAEL ANGELO.

Never!

Bitter is servitude at best. Already
So many years hast thou been serving me;
But rather as a friend than as a servant.
We have grown old together. Dost thou think

So meanly of this Michael Angelo

As to imagine he would let thee serve,

When he is free from service? Take this purse, Two thousand crowns in gold.

URBINO.

Two thousand crowns!

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Ay, it will make thee rich. Thou shalt not die A beggar in a hospital.

URBINO.

Oh, Master!

MICHAEL ANGELO.

I cannot have them with me on the journey
That I am undertaking. The last garment
That men will make for me will have no pockets.

URBINO, kissing the hand of MICHAEL ANGELO.
My generous master!

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Hush!

URBINO.

My Providence!

The valley of Clitumnus, with its farms
And snow-white oxen, grazing in the shade
Of the tall poplars on the river's brink.
O Nature, gentle mother, tender nurse!
I, who have never loved thee as I ought,
But wasted all my years immured in cities,
And breathed the stifling atmosphere of streets,
Now come to thee for refuge. Here is peace.
Yonder I see the little hermitages
Dotting the mountain side with points of light,
And here St. Julian's convent, like a nest
Of curlews, clinging to some windy cliff.
Beyond the broad, illimitable plain
Down sinks the sun, red as Apollo's quoit,
That, by the envious Zephyr blown aside,
Struck Hyacinthus dead, and stained the earth
With his young blood, that blossomed into flowers
And now, instead of these fair deities,

Dread demons haunt the earth; hermits inhabit
The leafy homes of sylvan Hamadryads;
And jovial friars, rotund and rubicund,

Replace the old Silenus with his ass.

How still it is among these ancient oaks!
Surges and undulations of the air
Uplift the leafy boughs, and let them fall
With scarce a sound. Such sylvan quietudes
Become old age. These huge centennial oaks,
That may have heard in infancy the trumpets
Of Barbarossa's cavalry, deride

Man's brief existence, that with all his strength
He cannot stretch beyond the hundredth year.
This little acorn, turbaned like the Turk,
Which with my foot I spurn, may be an oak
Hereafter, feeding with its bitter mast
The fierce wild boar, and tossing in its arms
The cradled nests of birds, when all the men
That now inhabit this vast universe,

They and their children, and their children's children,

Shall be but dust and mould, and nothing more.
Through openings in the trees I see below me

Here underneath these venerable oaks,

Wrinkled and brown and guarled like them with

age,

A brother of the monastery sits,

Lost in his meditations. What may be

The questions that perplex, the hopes that cheer

him?

Good-evening, holy father.

MONK.

God be with you.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Pardon a stranger if he interrupt Your meditations.

MONK.

It was but a dream, The old, old dream, that never will come true; The dream that all my life I have been dreaming And yet is still a dream.

MICHAEL ANGELO.

All men have dreams I have had mine; but none of them came true; They were but vanity. Sometimes I think The happiness of man lies in pursuing, Not in possessing; for the things possessed Lose halt their value. Tell me of your dream

Am I a spirit, or so like a spirit,

That I could slip through bolted door or window? As I was passing down the street, I saw

A glimmer of light, and heard the well-known

chink

Of chisel upon marble. So I entered,

To see what keeps you from your bed so late.
MICHAEL ANGELO, coming forward with the lamp.
You have been revelling with your boon compan-
ions,

Giorgio Vasari, and you come to me
At an untimely hour.

GIORGIO.

The Pope hath sent me. His Holiness desires to see again The drawing you once showed him of the dome Of the Basilica.

What is the marble group that glimmers there Behind you?

MICHAEL ANGELO.

Nothing, and yet everything,

As one may take it. It is my own tomb,
That I am building.

GIORGIO.

Do not hide it from me. By our long friendship and the love I bear you, Refuse me not!

MICHAEL ANGELO, letting fall the lamp.
Life hath become to me

An empty theatre, its lights extinguished,
The music silent, and the actors gone;
And I alone sit musing on the scenes
That once have been. I am so old that Death
Oft plucks me by the cloak, to come with him;
And some day, like this lamp, shall I fall down,
And my last spark of life will be extinguished.
Ah me! ah me! what darkness of despair!
So near to death, and yet so far from God!

Page 29. The Skeleton in Armor.

This Ballad was suggested to me while riding on the sea-shore at Newport. A year or two previous a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armor; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, for 1838-1839,

twelfth century,-that style which some authors have, from one of its most striking characteristics, called the round arch style, the same which in England is denominated Saxon and sometimes Norman architecture.

are no ornaments remaining, which might possibly "On the ancient structure in Newport there have served to guide us in assigning the probable date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is tion to it, is indicative of an earlier rather than found of the pointed arch, nor any approximaof a later period. From such characteristics as remain, however, we can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded that all who are familiar with Old-Northern architecture will concur, THAT THIS BUILDING WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently received; for there are several such alterations in the upper part of the building which cannot be mistaken, and which were most likely occasioned by its being adapted in modern times to various uses; for example, as the substructure of a windmill, and latterly as a hay magazine. To the same times may be referred the windows, the fireplace, and the apertures made above the columns. That this building could not have been erected for a windmill, is what an architect will easily discern."

I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently well established for the purpose of a ballad; though doubtless many a citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the Round Tower, will be ready to explain, with Sancho: "God bless me! did I not warn you to have a care of what you were doing, for that it was nothing but a windmill; and nobody could mistake it, but one who had the like in his head."

Page 31. Skoal!

In Scandinavia, this is the customary saluta tion when drinking a health. I have slightly changed the orthography of the word, in order to preserve the correct pronunciation.

Page 32. The Luck of Edenhall.

The tradition upon which this ballad is founded, and the "shards of the Luck of Edenhall,' still exist in England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Christopher Musgrave, Bart., of Eden Hall, Cumberland; and is not so entirely shattered as the ballad leaves it.

Page 32. The Elected Knight.

This strange and somewhat mystical ballad is from Nyerup and Rahbek's Danske Viser of the Middle Ages. It seems to refer to the first preaching of Christianity in the North, and to the institution of Knight-Errantry. The three maidens I suppose to be Faith, Hope, and Charity. The irregularities of the original have been carefully preserved in the translation.