of the profound reverence which the
great master minds of the world, like Augustine, Pascal, and Bacon, have
ever expressed for the ideas which were revealed by Christianity and the
old prophets of Jehovah; ideas which many bright but inferior
intellects, in their egotistical arrogance, have sought to subvert.

Yet it was neither as sculptor nor painter that Michael Angelo left the
most enduring influence, but as architect. Painting and sculpture are
the exclusive ornaments and possession of the rich and favored. But
architecture concerns all men, and most men have something to do with it
in the course of their lives. What boots it that a man pays two thousand
pounds for a picture to be shut up in his library, and probably more
valued for its rarity, or from the caprices of fashion, than for its
real merits? But it is something when a nation pays a million for a
ridiculous building, without regard to the object for which it is
intended,--to be observed and criticised by everybody and for
succeeding generations. A good picture is the admiration of a few; a
magnificent edifice is the pride of thousands. A picture necessarily
cultivates the taste of a family circle; a public edifice educates the
minds of millions. Even the Moses of Michael Angelo is a mere object of
interest to those who visit the church of San Pietro in Vincoli; but St.
Peter's is a monument to be seen by large populations from generation to
generation. All London contemplates St. Paul's Church or the Palace of
Westminster, but the National Gallery may be visited by a small fraction
of the people only once a year. Of the thousands who stand before the
Tuileries or the Madeleine not one in a hundred has visited the gallery
of the Louvre. What material works of man so grand as those hoary
monuments of piety or pride erected three thousand years ago, and still
magnificent in their very ruins! How imposing are the pyramids, the
Coliseum, and the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages! And even when
architecture does not rear vaulted roofs and arches and pinnacles, or
tower to dazzling heights, or inspire reverential awe from the
associations which cluster around it, how interesting are even its minor
triumphs! Who does not stop to admire a beautiful window, or porch, or
portico? Who does not criticise his neighbor's house, its proportions,
its general effect, its adaptation to the uses designed? Architecture
never wearies us, for its wonders are inexhaustible;