paused just in time, and abstained, with a sentiment of
profound pity.

Of all this sentiment Michelangelo is the achievement; and first of all,
of pity. Pieta--pity--the pity of the Virgin Mother over the dead body
of Christ, expanded into the pity of all mothers over all dead sons, the
entombment, with its cruel "hard stones"--that is the subject of his
predilection. He has left it in many forms, sketches, half-finished
designs, finished and unfinished groups of sculpture; but always as a
hopeless, rayless, almost heathen sorrow--no divine sorrow, but mere
pity and awe at the stiff limbs and colourless lips. There is a drawing
of his at Oxford, in which the dead body has sunk to the earth between
the mother's feet, with the arms extended over her knees. The tombs in
the sacristy of San Lorenzo are memorials, not of any of the nobler and
greater Medici, but of Giuliano, and Lorenzo the younger, noticeable
chiefly for their somewhat early death. It is mere human nature
therefore which has prompted the sentiment here. The titles assigned
traditionally to the four symbolical figures, Night and Day, The
Twilight and The Dawn, are far too definite for them; for these figures
come much nearer to the mind and spirit of their author, and are a more
direct expression of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical
conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate and express, less
by way of definite conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a
piece of music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments,
which shift and mix and define themselves and fade again, whenever the
thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions and
surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one would come to
the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for seriousness, for
solemnity, for dignity of impression, perhaps, but not for consolation.
It is a place neither of terrible nor consoling thoughts, but of vague
and wistful speculation. Here, again, Michelangelo is the disciple not
so much of Dante as of the Platonists. Dante's belief in immortality is
formal, precise, and firm, as much so almost as that of a child, who
thinks the dead will hear if you cry loud enough. But in Michelangelo
you have maturity, the mind of the grown man, dealing cautiously and
dispassionately with serious things; and what hope he has is based on
the consciousness of ignorance--ignorance of man, ignorance of the
nature of the mind,