voted her life to the memory of her
husband and to religion. She was cele-
brated for her poetry, and associated
with the men of letters of that time.
Her chief friends were among that
group of earnest thinkers who, without
ceasing to be Catholics, desired to re-
form and regenerate their Church, and
she was accordingly viewed with suspi-
cion and placed under the supervision
of the Holy Office.

Michelangelo, devout by nature,
shared her sentiments, and her influ-
ence strengthened his religious feeling.
They were also drawn together by a
common love of poetry, and some of
his finest sonnets were written for Vit-
toria. Several of her letters to him
exist, always written in the style of a
great lady, and showing high admira-
tion for the illustrious artist.
friendship was one of the consolations
of his old age, and we are glad to see
that Mr. Symonds has swept away the
web of romance which gradually had
distorted the nature of a sincere affec-
tion and esteem between two noble and,
in some respects, kindred natures.

Her

In one of these Michelangelo describes the Marchioness of Pescara as a woman through whose lips a man, or rather a god, speaks to him, causing a complete change in his nature.

The poems of Michelangelo remained in manuscript for fifty-nine years after his death. His great-nephew then collated and compared all the autographs and copies, and determined to what he called "reduce" them. The great artist worshipped beauty in the Platonic sense, and this thought appears constantly in his poetry, in which love is treated from the point of view of mystical philosophy. Michelangelo

the younger ruthlessly changed words, lines, nay, whole verses, and amplified wherever he conceived brevity to have Too great stress [he truly remarks] has hitherto been laid on it by his [Michelanobscured thought. He took extreme gelo's] biographers. Not content with ex- pains, from a mistaken desire to enaggerating its importance in his life, they hance his illustrious ancestor's reputahave misinterpreted its nature. The world tion, to garble the work of his greatseems unable to take interest in a man un-uncle. Space will not permit us to less it can contrive to discover a love affair follow Mr. Symonds in his acute critin his career. The singular thing about icism on the later critics and editors Michelangelo is that, with the exception of of Michelangelo. The latest, Signor Vittoria Colonna, no woman is known to Guasti, approves the pious fraud of have influenced his heart or head in any Buonarroti's descendant, and Signor way. In his correspondence he never A. Gotti, in his biography, goes so far mentions women, unless they be aunts, as to adopt an extraordinary theory, cousins, grand-nieces, or servants. About that letters addressed to, or concerning his mother he is silent. We have no tradition regarding amours in youth or middle a certain Tommaso Cavalieri, were age; and only two words dropped by Con- really intended for Vittoria Colonna. divi lead us to conjecture that he was not Benedetto Varchi, in his commentary, wholly insensible to the physical attraction mentions Cavalieri as of the female. Romancers and legendmakers have, therefore, forced Vittoria

Colonna to play the rôle of Juliet in Michel-
angelo's life-drama. It has not occurred to
these critics that there is something essen-
tially disagreeable in the thought of an
aged couple entertaining an amorous corre-
spondence. I use these words deliberately,
because poems which breathe obvious pas-
sion of no merely spiritual character have

a young Roman of very noble birth, in
at Rome, not only incomparable physical
whom I recognized, while I was sojourning
such excellent intelligence, and such grace-
beauty, but so much elegance of manners,
ful behavior, that he well deserved
still deserves-to win the more love the
better he is known.

and

Tommaso Cavalieri helped to nurse

of the Palazzo del Senatore was finished during his lifetime. His intimate friend, Tommaso dei Cavalieri, carried on the work of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, so we may assume that the latter building fairly corresponds to his intention.

During the winter of 1563-64 Michelangelo's health caused great anxiety to his friends in Rome, who wrote to summon his nephew Lionardo from Florence. Though within a few months of ninety, he persisted in going out in all weathers, and was impatient of any restraint. On February the 18th, 1564, he died, without seeing Lionardo, who arrived three days later.

Michelangelo in his last illness, and were designed by him, and the fine after his death carried on the architec- double staircase leading to the entrance tural work he had begun at the Capitol. Buonarroti was seventy-five when he finished the frescoes in the Pauline Chapel, "with great effort and fatigue," as he told Vasari. The "Deposition from the Cross," now standing behind the high altar in the Duomo of Florence, dates from about the same time, and is said to have been designed for his own monument. In 1544 and 1546 the old master was very ill in Rome. The latter year saw the death of Antonio da Sangallo, the architect who preceded him at St. Peter's, and with whom and his followers he had long been at war. Paul the Third did not improve matters by taking his palace, the Farnese, out of Sangallo's hands and ordering Michelangelo to finish it. The consequence was that, when the old man was appointed architect-in-chief of St. Peter's, every kind of obstacle was thrown in his way by the staff of architects and workmen trained under Sangallo, who resented the alterations in his plans introduced by Michelangelo. It would take too long to follow the changes made by Raphael, Baldassare Peruzzi and Sangallo, upon Bramante's

original scheme, to which Michelangelo

to a certain extent reverted.

Four successive popes after Paul the Third supported Buonarroti against his

detractors and enemies, so that he was enabled to carry out his plans while he lived. Unfortunately, according to his wont, he communicated his intentions to no one, and left no working models fit for use, except in the case of the noble cupola. For this, various friends persuaded him, when in 1557 a serious illness threatened his health, to have a large wooden model constructed. St. Peter's cannot, therefore, be regarded as the creation of Michelangelo's genius, for subsequent architects changed the essential features of his design. As an

old writer remarks:

The cross which Michelangelo made Greek is now Latin; and if it be thus with the essential form, judge ye of the details!

Psychologists of the new school have used Michelangelo as one of the pegs on which to hang their theories of neurotic disorders.

Mr. Symonds in his last pages observes] a To identify genius with insanity is [as pernicious paradox. To recognize that it cannot exist without some inequalities of nervous energy, some perturbations of nervous function, is reasonable.

Few, we think, will read the lifestory of this grand old man without a feeling of strong admiration for the so

briety of his life, for his extraordinary power for work, and for his intellectual activity prolonged to an extreme old

age.

JANET ROss.

From Temple Bar.

A MOSLEM SHRINE, AND A FUNERAL.

JUST off the highroad, on a breezy cliff which overlooks the Mediterranean, two little domes peer above a rough, lime-washed wall. They indicate that a saint and his saintly issue (for the title is hereditary in Islam) lie buried there, and, in their way, define the gulf which the French are so anxious to bridge over here in Algeria. In fact, they are quite worth a visit succession of visits; and when once I had pierced their weather-beaten shell, as I did one bright morning in March, I

even a

The buildings on the Campidoglio became thenceforward a slave of the

quiet place, a constant worshipper at | caretaker a good man who has either the shrines of Sidi Mohammed el Ro- obtained his office as a sinecure of inbrini and Sidi Braham his son, one of heritance, or has been at pains to estabthe regular congregation, as you may lish it as such for the benefit of himself say. And I found the gentle decay and posterity. Springing as an excresspiritual and actual-set over shrine cence from the northern wall, and built and devotees alike, so infinitely fasci- into it, is the oldest of the koubbas, or nating and suggestive that I have at- shrines, a blind, white square of broad tempted to translate some of it into stones girt with a cornice of gaudy tiles, English, though I am afraid the vivid, and bristling with a rude battlement, softly garish atmosphere and complex- above which rises a squat, blunted ion struck too Eastern a note to be dome. A glance through the grating tolerated in another medium. Let us in the door reveals darkness and dim see, however.

tombs, a ragged banner or two, and a bit of faded drapery; over everything dust, mildew, and spiders.

and cabalistic signs, a bright Eastern picture. She bears an airy little façade of three or four horseshoe arches poised on slender spiral columns discovered through their crust of crumbling whitewash to be marble; relics, possibly of the old Roman city buried here. Two tin lanterns, stuck over with pink paper roses and guttered candle-ends, dangle to and fro under the arcade.

Whitewash, neglect, and rank growth are our first impressions of this family sepulchre of the Robrinis of C-. Peering through the ragged branches Great splay weeds, coarse grass, and a of a bushy old fig-tree, facing her sister, dark, sticky soil; tombstones every- is the younger of these two little shrines. where, jostling each other in corners, More adventurous, flightier, sadly tawheeling over as the ground slopes, dry; making, however, with her gay emerging from the earth at all angles dado of tiles, queer, scrawling mottoes and mostly half buried by dead leaves and rotting vegetation; a mere rubbishheap of tombs; and over all lime-wash daubed on in lumps, filling up mouldings, cavities, and crevices; plastered over dirt and fragments of birds'-nests, spiders' webs, and the spiders themselves; splashes of lime on the tiledados and cornices, and on the painted woodwork of doors and sarcophagi; one even suspects that the dead themselves have been daubed and spattered into a semblance of cleanliness by this wholesale whitener of sepulchres, and then left to rot until native dirt shall have so obtrusively reasserted itself that another house-cleaning becomes inevitable. Beyond these broad impressions, tawdriness and a crystallized religion thrust themselves upon you.

The shell of the whole, built perhaps some four hundred years ago, is not without a certain plain majesty due to solidity, and breadth of treatment by the original architect, whoever he was. An elaborate description is unnecessary where simplicity is at once the charm and prevalent feature. Imagine an oblong enclosure strewn with narrow white tombs in all stages of obliteration and decay, choked with waving grasses and slimy weeds; at its eastern base a low, white pent-house where dwells the

At our first meeting the koubbas were simmering in a mellow glow, as if centuries of warmth and light were being returned to the sun which gave them. Nothing was wanting to complete the Eastern glamour of the whole; vivid sunshine; white domes clear cut against a blue sky; a tall palm with its swaying crown of feathers; a shrouded woman huddled against the wall, and her dirty child tumbling half-naked among the tombs; a hobbled donkey painfully cropping here and there; and, as if to fill and crown the picture, a young Kabyle came presently out of the lean-to at the end of the court carrying a cruche in her hand.

A gay petticoat, striped red and white, down to her knees, a loose muslin shirt which suggested instead of hiding her fuli bust, and a bright handkerchief in her glossy hair, were all her dress. One stopped to admire her gracious carriage

blatant storm and stress amid which most of us sweat and groan our days away.

and unembarrassed step, her ruddy- | Arabs into flâneurs, chiffoniers, touts, brown clear skin and large shining eyes. quack guides, and what not (all which She came, swinging the cruche, to the parts, be it said, the Arabs were very dilapidated old well in the middle of the willing to play); from Algiers, I say, court, and stood leaning on one arm to the tranquil moments of this even against the parapet while the bucket life is a far cry, and hopefully suggesdescended. Then she hauled it up tive of a possible asylum from the noisy, hand-over-hand, with easy, sweeping strokes, her body bending to the weight like some slender poplar before a gale, her bare feet planted apart, grasping Cemeteries and tombs are favorite the soil as firmly as its roots. A color haunts of the women in all Eastern flushed her brown cheeks, and the light countries, and accordingly I find numgleamed in her eyes; her soft lips bers of them here every day. In the parted to ease her breathing, her bosom presence of the dead, it seems, they heaved under its gauzy veil with the venture to disregard the living, for dihard work. The March wind caught rectly they have entered the court and her hair and blew it across her face; kissed the walls and a stray stone or so, she tossed it back with a smile, and as they throw off their habarahs, and, she tossed, threw a glance at us over squatting in a corner, prepare to enjoy her shoulder, and smiled again. A fine, themselves in their shrill, acrid fashion. free young thing, innocent and frisky Shrouded in the habarah, her legs as a filly out at grass, with a toilful, swathed in thick folds of calico, each frugal life before her in the quiet court, resembles her sister ghost, and shuffles until she marry some grave, brown man on her same dull way encumbered with of her own race, and raise up strong | mystery- none of her seeking-drasons to sprawl as children in a sunny peries and babies. Unveiled, the mocorner such as this, then to go forth to notony is still there, for it goes deeper work tending goats, or hoeing vineyards than the veil; and horrible it is to conon the rugged mountain sides or in the clude, as irresistibly we must, that the peaceful valleys of this beautiful land clothes have become veritable Nessusof hers. shirts; that the shrouds once on can This pretty creature was the daughter never come off again; for if put away of the caretaker, and lived in the lean-they are still there, shrouding soul into hut with I don't know how many stead of body. And the shrouding here generations of relatives; for, as well as begins at fourteen; think of that! women and girls, there was a swarm of mother of two children- -a mere slip children forever crawling and scram- of a girl-comes nearly every day. bling about in the court. Comes shuffling in, a drab bundle of a creature, dragging her babies with her; punctually kisses the same stones, and then chatters in a thin voice for half an hour. A more pathetic sight I think I never saw. Wan and lined and vacant; gossips a little, slanders in whispers and with eyes askance at the object of it, or at me; laughs shrilly without

A

I watched often and carefully the simple life of the Kabyle family, and found it full of charm and suggestion. There was a gentle, uncomplaining mediocrity about them all; a steady working for a few things and a deep enjoyment of the wages thereof, a directness, an innocence, and a vigor which, as a lesson alone, were worth merriment, and always where to cry going out to see. From Algiers, brightest, most motley, most self-seeking of sunny southern towns, where the French have signally bridged their gulf -laying sure foundations of absinthe and hotel requirements to be fulfilled for sous-and converted their wild

would be more to the purpose; then rises with a weary gesture and puts on the shroud that never was off if she but knew it; and shuffles out again into her cage.

These Kabyle dwellers in the lean-to are better off. No shrouds, palpable or

impalpable for them. Hard work in | men chanting the profession of the plenty and a bed as hard to rest on, faith announced that the funeral was scanty fare, a shed to cover them; here at hand. I watched it winding along are no luxuries, God wot. But free the road for a while, a narrow file of limbs and a bare head, bare feet, and a white-robed figures, then the bier free soul, are gifts from the treasure- draped with red cloth; a tail of motley house of nature, though now perhaps followers jostling behind. They swung somewhat scorned and made light of by along at a free, very unfunereal gait, the qualms and whimsies of a high- and entered the courtyard in pairs, sniffing world. "Income of one hun- headed by the Marabout himself, a dred pounds a year," cries Carlyle, "and puffed-up gentleman with an air of no dry-rot in the soul of you anywhere; conquest about him, a little out of place income of one hundred thousand pounds at such a time, but probably rendered a year, and nothing but dry-and-wet- | habitual and instinctive by the much rot in the soul of you (ugly appetites, kissing and grovelling of his depenunveracities, blusterous conceits, and dents and flunkeys. A herd of hired probably as symbol of all things-a or (at any rate) professional mournpot-belly to your poor body itself); Oh, ers trooped in next, hemming in the my friends!" bier and dirging without pause; last, The other day, whilst I was prowling the tail turned out to be relatives, about amid the tombs and weeds, a dependents and hangers-on of the Marparty came in to dig a grave. There about house, with the inevitable comwere eighteen of them, men and boys. pany of loafers, the spiritless lads and Seventeen chatted and laughed and grinning ragamuffins one sees lounging smoked, while one worked with pick and swarming, screaming, sleeping, or and shovel. He began near the south smoking at the street corners. wall, between the porches, and found it pick-work mostly, for to every shovelful of soil there were layers of slabs and tiles to be lifted out-fragments, I suppose, of submerged tombs - making a jerky job of it for the digger. It transpired that a lady aunt of the present saintly Robrini had died; her funeral was to be at noon. But the grave had only reached a three-foot depth when a relative of the departed arrived - a complacent youth with a Greek face and saw the work with dismay. For it appeared the lady's dignity, as aunt of the present Marabout, demanded, if you please, admission into the damp and unwholesome sanctity of our very oldest koubba.

The grave-digger looked troubled, but said nothing; falling, after a pause, to bundling tiles, stones, and earth back into the hole again. Then the party entered the koubba, welcomed with a leer by a ghoulish old hag, who hovered about as if she were a Familiar; and I heard the tapping of the pick echoing through the vault and the murmur of the bystanders' voices.

A monotonous, incessant wailing of

The

There is a singular lack of reverence, even of method, about this funeral; a certain amount of mechanical ritual blindly performed, with various impromptu touches of humor, the more humorous that they are impromptu, and not obvious to the performers. bier is carelessly let drop by the bearers and lies forlorn on the ground, its poor limp burden dreadfully apparent to us under the scanty red shawl which covers it. The mourners crouch against the wall in a line, and maintain their monotonous chant. It rises and falls like the moaning of the wind; dies away at one end of the line, and is desperately taken up at the other. There is a vague, elusive air about it, admirably suiting the broad vowels and soft, lingering consonants of the Arabic. Some of the faces, too, are impressive in a statuesque, oracular sort of way. That man at the end, with the high, narrow brows, sunken eyes, and thin black beard, looks an ascetic enthusiast a Moslem Francis of Assisi; for there is the dreamy, softly luminous gleam in his eyes which mysticism, tempered by hunger, always seems to