n pages, but has
succeeded in translating or mistranslating all vitality out of it.

Mr. Harford has attempted, by giving sketches of the chief characters of
Florence and of Rome during Michel Angelo's life, to show some of the
personal influences which most affected him. But his bricks all lie
separate; they are not built up with mortar that holds them together.
A superficial account of the Platonic Academy is inserted to show the
effect of the fashionable philosophy of Florence upon the youthful
artist; but it is so done that we learn little more from it than that
the Academy existed, that Michel Angelo was a member of it, and that he
wrote some poems in which some Platonic ideas are expressed. There is no
philosophic analysis of the individual Platonism which is apparent, not
only in his poems, but in some of his paintings,--no exhibition of its
connection with the other portions of his intellectual development.
Michel Angelo's ideas of beauty, of the relation of the arts, of the
connection between Art and Religion, deserve fuller investigation than
they have yet received. His tremendous power has exerted such a control
over sensitive, imaginative, and weak minds, that even his errors have
been accepted as models, and his false ideas as principles of authority.
Mr. Harford's book will do little to assist in the formation of a true
judgment upon these and similar points.

But we will not confine our notice to assertions; we will exhibit at
least some of the minor faults upon which our assertions are based,--for
it would demand larger space than we could give to enter upon the
illustration of the principal faults of the book. First, then, for
inaccuracies of statement,--which are the less to be excused, as Mr.
Harford had ample opportunity for correctness. For instance, in the
description of the tombs of the Medici, Mr. Harford writes of the famous
figures of Aurora and Twilight, Day and Night: "The four figures that
adorn the tombs are allegorical; and they are specially worthy of
notice, because they first set the example of connecting ornamental
appendages of this description with funereal monuments. Introduced by
so great an authority, this example was quickly followed throughout the
whole of Europe." The carelessness of this assertion is curious. The
custom of connecting allegorical figures with funereal monuments had
prevailed in Italy for a long time before Michel Angelo. Perhaps the
most striking and familiar