to the senses, but whatever is so acknowledged by the mind.  So far, then, as the ancient statues are found to represent her,—­and the student’s own feeling must be the judge of that,—­they are undoubtedly both true and important objects of study, as presenting not only a wider, but a higher view of Nature, than might else be commanded, were they buried with their authors; since, with the finest forms of the fairest portion of the earth, we have also in them the realized Ideas of some of the greatest minds.  In like manner may we extend our sphere of knowledge by the study of all those productions of later ages which have stood this test.  There is no school from which something may not be learned.  But chiefly to the Italian should the student be directed, who would enlarge his views on the present subject, and especially to the works of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo; in whose highest efforts we have, so to speak, certain revelations of Nature which could only have been made by her privileged seers.  And we refer to them more particularly, as to the two great sovereigns of the two distinct empires of Truth,—­the Actual and the Imaginative; in which their claims are acknowledged by that within us, of which we know nothing but that it must respond to all things true.  We refer to them, also, as important examples in their mode of study; in which it is evident that, whatever the source of instruction, it was never considered as a law of servitude, but rather as the means of giving visible shape to their own conceptions.

From the celebrated antique fragment, called the Torso, Michael Angelo is said to have constructed his forms.  If this be true,—­and we have no reason to doubt it,—­it could nevertheless have been to him little more than a hint.  But that is enough to a man of genius, who stands in need, no less than others, of a point to start from.  There was something in this fragment which he seems to have felt, as if of a kindred nature to the unembodied creatures in his own mind; and he pondered over it until he mastered the spell of its author.  He then turned to his own, to the germs of life that still awaited birth, to knit their joints, to attach the tendons, to mould the muscles,—­finally, to sway the limbs by a mighty will.  Then emerged into being that gigantic race of the Sistina,—­giants in mind no less than in body, that appear to have descended as from another planet.  His Prophets and Sibyls seem to carry in their persons the commanding evidence of their mission.  They neither look nor move like beings to be affected by the ordinary concerns of life; but as if they could only be moved by the vast of human events, the fall of empires, the extinction of nations; as if the awful secrets of the future had overwhelmed in them all present sympathies.  As we have stood before these lofty apparitions of the painter’s mind, it has seemed to us impossible that the most vulgar spectator could have remained there irreverent.