The grassy clods now calved; now half appeared His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds. The libbard and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks. One sits tearing convulsively the tight bandages from his limbs; another, forgetful entirely of his own fate, is gazing on the face of the Judge, and another still, like a half-waked sleeper, bewildered with the sudden and awful scene, lays his hand unconsciously upon his companion and prepares to follow him. In the centre, seated on an overturned tombstone, a skeleton stares out directly upon you. Those eyeless sockets and fleshless cheeks are already instinct with a life. The spectre seems to be listening to the dreadful clangor of the trumpets above, and biting its bony fingers, it quakes with very horror. O! your heart's blood curdles to look at it! A litle to the right, are two demons seizing a poor wretch before he has half risen from his grave and dragging him to their flaming hell. Down the vaulted way which leads thither, figures of men are solemnly moving; and just at the entrance a fiend squats with his long, ape-like hands resting on his knees, and black, distorted form thrown out full by the lurid glare behind. He seems in extasy at the prospect of enlarging the society of his abode. When that awful day does come, what a carnival will there be in hell! But from this group of miserable souls, some few are withdrawing into the upper air. In the distance is seen a figure, clothed in flowing drapery, soaring majestically heavenward, with eyes uplifted toward the beaming glories of its future home. Others rise painfully and slow, half doubting their acceptance, while others still are contending with demons who seek to drag them to their infernal abode. But good angels dispute the precious prize, and bear it on high. These souls are they of whom the scripture speaks; "saved as by fire." The dreadful struggle is carried on in mid-air. Here you see fiends twisting their claws into the long, sweeping hair of some unhappy victim and drawing him down headlong, while avenging angels, with faces of mingled severity and compassion, precipitate his fall. There is one figure, that of a young man whom the demons have grasped around the feet, which is perfectly horrible to see. He offers not the least resistance. The awful voice of the judgment trump seems almost to have shattered his intellect, and he looks at you now with a countenance of idiotic despair. And now look yonder at that draperied form, with hands clasped and eyes upraised in such tranquil extasy. She has left earth and its corruption behind, and is rising steadily as a rising star. Her life here below has been one of earnest, hopefu! piety, gliding noiselessly along, like Siloa's hidden brook, "fast by the oracles of God." O! there are such spirits yet on earth, few though they be, and despised and rejected of men-the precious ten, for whom God delays righteous judgment on the world-the hostages of heaven in this camp of sin. In darkness and spiritual loneliness, and "much tribulation," they sit here, waiting patiently though with tears for that great hour of their liberation; like Peter and John, when "the angel of the Lord opened the prison-doors by night, and brought them forth." Below sits one, regarding her triumphant flight; and what soulcrushing despair is painted in that countenance! Perhaps they were companions in life, and as they walked at eventide together, talked solemnly about this very scene. The heart seems bursting at the thought of eternal separation from the cherished object of its earthly love, but separation is inevitable. "In that day, the one shall be taken and the other left." On the right hand of the Virgin, stands the assembly of the good. Here are a group gathering around a newly risen saint and welcoming him to their society. Others remain wrapt in grateful contemplation of the mercy that brought them thither, while a few are seen looking down upon the troubled and affrighted wretches against whom the Judge, with uplifted arm is uttering the dreadful curse. There is an air of blended pity and consent in their coun tenances as if they would even be themselves accursed for their brethren's sake. A mother looks down upon the child of her midnight watchings and prayers and takes one yearning farewell, to be repeated no more forever. One manly figure, the most promi nent of all, has pressed aside the crowd and is gazing, transfixed, upon the awful features of the Christ. There, sublime, with right arm extended as if to hurl the thunderbolt on the devoted beings below, stands the Incarnate God. But in his visage, the deity shines undimmed. He has left his humanity, in the sepulchre of his three days' rest. And yet the remembrance of Gethsemane and Calvary seems to quicken his holy wrath as he regards the despisers and mockers of their heart-wrung agonies. The gigantic form, drawn back in an attitude of indignation, every limb and feature pregnant with the spirit of a God, seems as near the ineffable original as a mortal might look upon and not die! Near the Judge, stands the multitude of those who have suffered unto the death for his name's sake-"the noble army of martyrs." There you see the beautiful Saint Catharine, leaning upon the wheel on which she breathed forth in torture, her heavenly spirit; tall, stalwart, forms of men. whom the rack and the cross brought unresistingly to an early and agonizing death; others, who were flayed alive or burnt. And above the whole, amid clouds of glory, float angel forms, bearing the instruments of the Saviour's passion-the cruel cross, the nails, the reed, the bitter sponge. The group of figures in the lower corner, at the spectator's right hand, is in some particulars the most effective of all. It is that of which I spoke incidentally above, upon which the Judge is pronouncing the curse. The artist seems to have here lost much of his dignity. He has introduced the fable of Charon and his boat-a license as intolerable in painting as it would be in preaching. But the details of execution are so admirable, that one would hardly consent to its omission, though it does thus offend theological propriety. The fatal skiff is represented as just touching the shore of hell, and the old ferryman, with upraised oar, is driving before him the terrified and crouching crowd. Portitor has horrendas aquas et flumina servat Some stand motionless, aghast, horror-struck at the sight before them; others wring their hands in despair. Along the bank the infernal fiends are gathering and laying hold of their victims before the boat has fairly struck. Their hideous visages are lighting up with glee; their huge protruding eyes gloat over this new prey. One young man, of athletic form, is stepping over the gunwale, and with clenched fists awaits the coming of a demon, Beside him, is a poor wretch who seeks to escape by drawing back into the boat. But a fiend, with vulture claws, and with wings broad and black and ribbed like a gigantic vampire's, has clutched his legs, and drawing one over each shoulder, prepares to drag him thence. The miserable man seizes the boat's side, and the fiend, enraged at his resistance, buries his white tusks in the victim's thick, trembling calf. The mind that can contemplate this grand masterpiece unmoved -nay, not overwhelmed-is lamentably destitute of all Christian, not to mention artistic, sensibility. An American traveller not long since gave his published opinion, declaring the whole composition, an irregular, unintelligible mass. I thought when reading that, of Chateaubrand's remark on the infidel. "The heavens which declare to all men the glory of God, and whose line is gone out through all the earth, say nothing to the atheist. Happily, it is not becase the stars are dumb, but that the atheists ars deaf." It is doubtless true, that this magnificent work is by no means free from artistic blemishes-errors of conception, as well as of execution. The episode of Charon, mentioned above, impairs very considerably the dignity of the general thought. And again, while a most masterly command of attitude is evinced in the disposition of the figures, there is too indiscriminate and prodigal a display of "anatomy." In this last department of his art, Angelo was especially profound. But in his application of it to drawing, he seemed to forget the proprieties. In his pictures, the infant and the woman are represented with a muscular developement almost and sometimes fully equal to that of the bearded man. And even in the drawing of the full-grown figure, a certain exaggeration is instantly noticed, by the most unpractised eye. It is utterly unaccountable how Angelo fell into so obvious a fault. But this picture appeals to a higher faculty in man than his intellectual taste. It addresses itself to his heart; and with an eloquence too deep for vocal utterance. Speech, says Carlyle, is great-but silence is greater. What transcendent eloquence does that mute scene breathe forth! It seems as if the angel of the Apocalypse had thundered to its author as to him at Patmos; "Write!' and then rending the awful veil, bid him gaze on "the things which shall be hereafter." The last afternoon that I spent in the Sistine Chapel was the last but one of my sojourn in Rome. I visited it alone. The custode had long before gone down, tired I suppose, of waiting for my departure and his accustomed fee; and only a solitary artist remained, who was copying a picture beyond the screen. The light from the high windows fell fainter and fainter, and the gigantic figures of the Judgment, like spirits of a midnight vision, were fading gently from before me, and blending their outline with the twilight air. I communed with my spirit and grew "afraid." "Stand still, my soul! In the silent dark I would question thee; Alone in the shadow drear and stark, With God and me. What, my soul, was thy errand here? Or heaping up dust from year to year? Speak, soul, aright, in His holy sight, And steadily on thee, through the night. What hast thou done, O soul of mine, That thou tremblest so? Hast thou wrought His task and kept the line He bade thee go? Summon thy sunshine bravery back, O, wretched sprite! Let me hear thy voice through this deep and black Now, standing apart with God and me, Thou art weakness all, Gazing vainly after the things to be, But never for this, never for this, Was thy being lent, For the craven's fear is but selfishness, Know well, my soul, God's hand controls Round Him, in calmest music rolls What to thee is shadow, to Him is day, And not on a blind and aimless way Man sees no future-a phantom show Past time is dead and the grasses grow The Present, the Present is all thou hast Like the patriarch's angel, hold him fast Albany, December 1847. POLITICAL TENDENCIES. The tendency of our politics in later years has been uniformly to radicalism. In this mad excitement after change, this inclination to uproot old forms and established institutions merely because they are old and established, and to adopt others of doubtful propriety both in theory and practice, because they impose by their novelty, both the great political parties of the day are alike engag ed. With them there is no conservatism. The ultra-radical alone is regarded. The ultra-radical alone can hope to succeed. It has been considered heretofore that the politics of the day embodied both these important principles and that they operated upon each other as mutual and important checks-that while the one was the party of progress, the party sometimes of great and beneficial reforms; the other was the conservator of whatever is good in the experience of the past and the protection from whatever is dangerous in the experiment of the future. But the action of political parties of late would seem to indicate that they have veered from their ancient and separate moorings and are together moving down the turbulent waters of change. The tendency of all legislation is to weaken and paralize the Executive arm and to strengthen, in exactly the same proportion the powers and the privileges of the people. It appears to be forgotten that there is such a thing as giving the people too much power-that there is an anarchy more terrible than despotism itself-that every encroachment upon the |