selves up to the full play of their fancy, and revel in the wildest imaginings, the most delicate and brilliant illusions. Even in the horrid scenes of the Inferno, gleams of beauty are ever breaking upon the vision; and in the description of heaven, Dante loses himself in unutterable splendors. Beatrice, with her cerulean eyes and golden hair, is the symbol of "increate” and everlasting beauty. Light, music, and motion, are the three simple elements in Dante's description of the celestial world, but how wondrously and gorgeously blended in the overpowering glory of its mystic circles. Boccaccio, Ariosto, Pulci, Berni and Metastasio, are "drunk with beauty." It was as much the beauty of the moon and stars, as their wondrous revolutions, that captivated the heart of Galileo. Machiavelli, cold and subtle as he may be deemed, was a poet, and never enjoyed himself better than among his birds and vines. Beauty was the polar star of Petrarch, who strangely mingles the raptures of devotion and of love. It was the dream of Tasso, and gleams, with a supernal glory, through the long and majestic march of the Gerusalemme. Much indeed of the Italian poetry is liable to stern reprehension, on account of its low moral tone, its frivolity and licentiousness; but its pervading element is beauty, radiant and immortal.

The same element is visible in all the productions of their painters and sculptors. The serene beauty of Raphael's Madonnas is absolutely wonderful. Michael Angelo's Moses, and his two statues of Night and Morning, are remarkable for severity and grandeur of expression, but, after all, it is the divine beauty which beams from the whole, which gives them their peculiar charm. Walk through the long corridors of the Vatican, or the magnificent rooms of the Pitti palace, amid a wilderness of sculptures and paintings from the hands of the great masters of ancient and of modern Italy, and the very air seems redolent of beauty. It awes the spirit like a presence and a mystery. In those silent

forms it lives forever, imbreathed, so to speak, by the power of genius-a charm and a glory acknowledged alike by the philosopher and the savage. For,

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever!"

Nothing, it would seem, could be more repulsive than the head of Medusa, environed with snakes, and yet, in the hands of Leonardo da Vinci, it is made attractive, by means of a strange, and, if the term be allowed, a hideous beauty. Shelley has caught the true idea, in one of his most striking, though unfinished poems.

"It lieth gazing on the midnight sky,

Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seem to lie

Loveliness like a shadow, from which shrine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.

Yet it is less the horror than the grace

Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone;
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face

Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
"Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,

Which humanize and harmonize the strain."

Of course we need not say that the music of Italy corresponds to the beauty of her landscape, consisting as it does in elaborate, but intense and ravishing harmony. Who has not heard of

Rosini, with his exquisite creations; and who has not been moved, at the recollection even, of the "Stabat Mater" of Pergolesi, styled the Raffaele of music; or the "Miserere" of Jomelli, with its strangely sweet and melancholy tones?

We know not but we might be justified in saying that beauty is the predominant feature in the religion of Italy; not, however, "the beauty of holiness ;" would that it were! but external beauty, the beauty of form and semblance; the symbol, it is true, of a higher and divine beauty, but often separated from it by a great gulf, like the body of the dead from the spirit which has taken its flight. So we find it enshrined in their temples and altars. These, indeed, are often adorned, or rather we ought to say, bedizened, with tinsel and gewgaws, and, what is worse, with tawdry images, mere idols of wood and stone. A rude, barbaric splendor, worthy only of the dark ages, often takes the place of a true and simple beauty. Nay more, both in form and arrangement, their churches, and especially their altars, are more allied to the genius of heathenism than of Christianity. After all, the most of their ecclesiastical edifices possess a wonderful charm, from their fine proportions and antique air. The Cathedral, in Milan, has been styled an Epic in stone. "It appears," says one, "like a petrified oriental dream." St. Peter's, at Rome, is the very perfection of beauty and grandeur. The majestic dome, and the serene festal air of the interior, strike the most casual observer. Santa Maria Novella, and the ancient church of Santa Crocé, in Florence, are distinguished by a simple and venerable beauty. But some of the old churches in the country, amid umbrageous trees and clustering vines, are yet more beautiful even than these, blending as they do with the glories of nature, and often hiding a deeper and more heartfelt worship.

If you say that the spirit of the Papal religion is alien from the simple and spiritual faith of the Son of God; that these beautiful

forms and that splendid ritual are but the adornment of the dead; be it so; but allow this, at least, that beauty is there, in its external form, and, under happier circumstances, might become the type of that awful and celestial beauty which pertains to the pure in heart, and dwells, in its perfection, only in the mind of God. Nor let us forget, that even amid the corruptions of Rome, some of the grand and all-transforming elements of Christianity are constantly recognized. The stars, indeed, are mingled with clouds and gloom, but they are stars nevertheless, and shine with benignant radiance, even upon Italian minds. The being and perfection of God, as the Creator and Judge, the universal Father and friend of all intelligent beings; the divinity and incarnation of Jesus Christ; the possibility of union and fellowship with God; the eternity of virtue; the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting, are truths, which however dimmed by error and prejudice, exert upon them a life-giving influence. Who can tell but all of beautiful and good, which we find in their character and productions, their painting and sculpture, their architecture and music, is to be traced to the silent and invisible influence of these divine principles? At all events we hold it possible to marry the beauty of the universe to the beauty of God; to unite, by boly and indissoluble ties, the splendors of art to the glories of purity and devotion. Are they not thus virtually blended in the mind of God; and will not the final "reconcilement of all things” mingle forever the beauties of external nature with the higher beauties of truth and love? It is the misfortune of this world, thus far, that things in themselves good and desirable are found divorced; so that the spirit of evil has been permitted to appropriate, as its own, some of the most perfect creations of genius and art. But this state of things must gradually pass away, is passing away now; so that spiritualism, hitherto bald and re

pulsive, will yet clothe itself in the warm and beautiful garments of unperverted nature.

It has been remarked, indeed, that the age of great architectural splendor and artistic beauty in churches, and in the community generally, is the age also of decline in spiritual worship. Possibly this may be the case, especially when these are accompanied with a worldly spirit, and a mere love of tinsel and show; but architectural beauty and aesthetic perfection are not the cause of such decline. Neither can it be shown to be their natuReverence for the form presupposes some

ral or proper result. reverence for the spirit. We linger over the dead long after the soul has departed. We deck with flowers their cold and silent tomb. The love of the form then is better than nothing. It may precede and even excite the love of the spirit; and we can easily imagine a time when the genius of true religion will animate all the creations of science and art. There is no tendency to the production of idolatry in the dim aisles of the wide old woods, in the "o'erarching dome" of the starry sky, in the music of winds and waves, or in the deep and awful stillness of the night, the most solemn and magnificent of all temples; yet these are the very things which the old idolaters worshipped, and which long served to perpetuate their paganism. It was in those awful shrines, and in the presence of those sublime realities, that they bowed the knee and offered sacrifices of blood! But the idolatry was in the heart, not in the universe; or that universe would long ago have been swept away, or covered with a pall by the hand of the Almighty. But there, as of old, are the everlasting hlils, the starry vault, the cadence of wind and wave, the deep roll of the thunder, and the organ blast of the tempest, calling men to reverence and worship. And if these have no tendency to idolatry, why should august and venerable forms, thrilling music, beautiful sculpture and painting, when they proceed from