hitecture,
Existing in itself, and not in seeming
A something it is not, surpasses them
As substance shadow....

... Yet he beholds
Far nobler works who looks upon the ruins
Of temples in the Forum here in Rome.
If God should give me power in my old age
To build for Him a temple half as grand
As those were in their glory, I should count
My age more excellent than youth itself,
And all that I have hitherto accomplished
As only vanity."

To which Vittoria responds:--

"I understand you.
Art is the gift of God, and must be used
Unto His glory. That in art is highest
Which aims at this."

The poet, with his characteristically delicate divination, has entered
into the inner spirit of these two immortal friends.

Walter Pater, writing of Michael Angelo, truly says:--

"Michael Angelo is always pressing forward from the outward
beauty--_il bel del fuor che agli occhi piace_--to apprehend the
unseen beauty; _trascenda nella forma universale_--that abstract
form of beauty about which the Platonists reason. And this gives
the impression in him of something flitting and unfixed, of the
houseless and complaining spirit, almost clairvoyant through the
frail and yielding flesh."

Again we find Pater saying:--

"Though it is quite possible that Michael Angelo had seen Vittoria,
that somewhat shadowy figure, as early as 1537, yet their closer
intimacy did not begin till about the year 1542, when Michael
Angelo was nearly seventy years old. Vittoria herself, an ardent
Neo-Catholic, vowed to perpetual widowhood since the news had
reached her, seventeen years before, that her husband, the youthful
and princely Marquess of Pescara, lay dead of the wounds he had
received in the battle of Pavia, was then no longer an object of
great passion. In a dialogue written by the painter, Francesco
d'Ollanda, we catch a glimpse of them together in an empty church
at Rome, one Sunday afternoon, discussing indeed the
characteristics of various schools of art, but still more the
writings of St. Paul, already following the ways and tasting the
sunless pleasures of weary people, whose hold on outward things is
slackening. In a letter still extant he regrets that when he
visited her after death he had kissed her hands only. He made,