rise
of Protestantism and the establishment of the Inquisition; the horrible
sack of Rome by the troops of De Bourbon; and the extinction of liberty
in his native city,--the robbing of the Florentine Peter in 1530 to
reimburse the Roman Paul for damages sustained in 1527. In the last
fearful struggle of the Florentines for their liberty Michael Angelo
took an important part. The city-walls were fortified under his
direction, and not a day of the dreadful siege saw him absent from his
post on San Miniato. Before that, he had been connected with the
proceedings of Savonarola; and his marvellous group of the Mourning
Madonna and the Dead Christ is supposed by Grimm to have been called
forth by the sad occurrences of 1498. He was connected with Lorenzo de'
Medici, Piero his son, Julius II., Leo X., Clement VII, Paul III., Paul
IV., and Pius IV.; and the complicated affairs of each of these rulers
affected at every turn his life, and not unfrequently gave to his labors
an entirely new direction.

It is M. Grimm's great merit to have described all these events so that
they appear with the vividness of contemporaneous history, and to have
clearly indicated their effect upon the life of his hero. He has given
us a charming history of the sixteenth century, with Michael Angelo as
its colossal central figure. The work contains much else that is
admirable: reflections upon Grecian and Venetian art, and a sketch of
the history of design in later times.--But to discuss or even to
enumerate all its beauties, and to criticize its few defects, would be
here impossible. We will therefore dismiss the subject, hoping that M.
Grimm may gratify and instruct us by still further productions of the
nature of that which has already rendered him so illustrious.

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