Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/81

Rh and even Catholic priests. One priest had his hat snatched away with rude violence; another who was supporting himself very innocently against a bench, was pushed about, this way and that, in a brutal manner. The ladies were driven out of the chapel on the close of the ceremonial, as if they had been prisoners of war, or a flock of sheep. The French Guards were also present, but they conducted themselves in a very different way. The Pope, in his own capital, guarded by foreign soldiery, guarded against his own people—what a humiliation!

I have returned since then to the chapel, that I might make a more close survey of Michael Angelo's celebrated painting of the Last Judgment. This fresco picture, which occupies the further end of the chapel, is greatly injured by time and the fading of the colors. The figure of Christ, as well as that of his mother, in the centre of the picture, is, however, well preserved, or restored. This Christ is not the Christ of the gospel, but an Herculean figure a la Buonarotti, who with a vehemently reprobative gesture exclaims to a crowd of Pharisaic sinners who are pressing towards him, “Depart from me, ye accursed of my Father!” Of one thing, however, I am quite certain, which is, that if the Son of God and man should be compelled on the day of judgment to say these words, He will do it with a sorrowful earnestness, a spiritual dignity, of which the Christ of Michael Angelo has not a trace. The accursed are naturally precipitated backwards, and down in the bottom of the picture one sees them seething and burning. In the mean time, the blessed sing praises, as, on the Saviour's right hand, they