the thought of deep and bitter grief; Ezekiel turns
with hasty movements to the genius next to him, who points
upwards with joyful expectation, etc. The sibyls are equally
characteristic: the Persian, a lofty, majestic woman, very aged;
the Erythraean, full of power, like the warrior goddess of
wisdom; the Delphic, like Cassandra, youthfully soft and
graceful, but with strength to bear the awful seriousness of
revelation.'--_Kugler_.

'The belief of the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the
sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed
by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century,
beginning with the verse--

"Dies irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in favilla
Teste David cum Sibylla."

It may be inferred that this hymn, admitted into the liturgy of
the Roman Church, gave sanction to the adoption of the sibyls
into Christian art. They are seen from this time accompanying the
prophets and apostles, in the cyclical decorations of the
church.... But the highest honour that art has rendered to the
sibyls has been by the hand of Michael Angelo,
on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Here in the conception of a
mysterious order of women, placed above and without all
considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great
master was peculiarly in his element. They exactly fitted his
standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to
the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the
abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. In
this respect, the sibyls on the Sistine Chapel ceiling are more
Michael Angelesque than their companions the prophets. For these,
while types of the highest monumental treatment, are yet men,
while the sibyls belong to a distinct class of beings, who convey
the impression of the very obscurity in which their history is
wrapt--creatures who have lived far from the abodes of men, who
are alike devoid of the expression of feminine sweetness, human
sympathy, or sacramental beauty; who are neither Christians nor
Jewesses, Witches nor Graces, yet living, grand, beautiful, and
true, according to laws revealed to the great Florentine genius
only.

Thus their figures may be said to be unique, as the offspring