the sleep and waking of existence, action and thought, the
gloom of death, the lustre of life, and the intermediate states of sadness
and of hope that form the borderland of both. Life is a dream between two
slumbers; sleep is death's twin-brother; night is the shadow of death;
death is the gate of life:--such is the mysterious mythology wrought by
the sculptor of the modern world in marble. All these figures, by the
intensity of their expression, the vagueness of their symbolism, force us
to think and question. What, for example, occupies Lorenzo's brain?
Bending forward, leaning his chin upon his wrist, placing the other hand
upon his knee, on what does he for ever ponder? The sight, as Rogers said
well, "fascinates and is intolerable." Michael Angelo has shot the beaver
of the helmet forward on his forehead, and bowed his head, so as to clothe
the face in darkness. But behind the gloom there is no skull, as Rogers
fancied. The whole frame of the powerful man is instinct with some
imperious thought. Has he outlived his life and fallen upon everlasting
contemplation? Is he brooding, injured and indignant, over his own doom
and the extinction of his race? Is he condemned to witness in immortal
immobility the woes of Italy he helped to cause? Or has the sculptor
symbolised in him the burden of that personality we carry with us in this
life and bear for ever when we wake into another world? Beneath this
incarnation of oppressive thought there lie, full-length and naked, the
figures of Dawn and Twilight, Morn and Evening. So at least they are
commonly called: and these names are not inappropriate; for the breaking
of the day and the approach of night are metaphors for many transient
conditions of the soul. It is only as allegories in a large sense,
comprehending both the physical and intellectual order, and capable of
various interpretation, that any of these statues can be understood. Even
the Dukes do not pretend to be portraits: and hence in part perhaps the
uncertainty that has gathered round them. Very tranquil and noble is
Twilight: a giant in repose, he meditates, leaning upon his elbow, looking
down. But Dawn starts from her couch, as though some painful summons had
reached her sunk in dreamless sleep, and called her forth to suffer. Her
waking to consciousness is like that of one who has been drowned, and who
finds the return to life agony. Before her eyes, seen even through the
mists of slumber, are the ruin and the