same instant to the wound in the side), than
in condemnation, though its gesture has been adopted as one of
threatening--first (and very nobly) by Benozzo Gozzoli, in the figure of
the Angel departing, looking towards Sodom--and afterwards, with
unfortunate exaggeration, by Michael Angelo. Orcagna's Madonna we think
a failure, but his strength has been more happily displayed in the
Apostolic circle. The head of St. John is peculiarly beautiful. The
other Apostles look forward or down as in judgment--some in indignation,
some in pity, some serene--but the eyes of St. John are fixed upon the
Judge Himself with the stability of love--intercession and sorrow
struggling for utterance with awe--and through both is seen a tremor of
submissive astonishment, that the lips which had once forbidden his to
call down fire from heaven should now themselves burn with irrevocable
condemnation.

* * *

74. "One feeling for the most part pervades this side of the
composition,--there is far more variety in the other; agony is depicted
with fearful intensity and in every degree and character; some clasp
their hands, some hide their faces, some look up in despair, but none
towards Christ; others seem to have grown idiots with horror:--a few
gaze, as if fascinated, into the gulf of fire towards which the whole
mass of misery are being urged by the ministers of doom--the flames bite
them, the devils fish for and catch them with long grappling-hooks:--in
sad contrast to the group on the opposite side, a queen, condemned
herself but self-forgetful, vainly struggles to rescue her daughter from
a demon who has caught her by the gown and is dragging her backwards
into the abyss--her sister, wringing her hands, looks on in agony--it is
a fearful scene.

"A vast rib or arch in the walls of pandemonium admits one into the
contiguous gulf of Hell, forming the third fresco, or rather a
continuation of the second--in which Satan sits in the midst, in
gigantic terror, cased in armor and crunching sinners--of whom Judas,
especially, is eaten and ejected, re-eaten and re-ejected again and
again forever. The punishments of the wicked are portrayed in circles
numberless around him. But in everything save horror this compartment is
inferior to the preceding, and it has been much injured and
repainted."--Vol. iii., p. 138.

* * *

75. We might have been spared all notice of this last compartment.
Throughout Italy,