my first visit. It is a room of noble proportions, lofty and long,
though divided in the midst by a screen or partition of white marble,
which rises high enough to break the effect of spacious unity. There are
six arched windows on each side of the chapel, throwing down their light
from the height of the walls, with as much as twenty feet of space (more
I should think) between them and the floor. The entire walls and ceiling
of this stately chapel are covered with paintings in fresco, except the
space about ten feet in height from the floor, and that portion was
intended to be adorned by tapestries from pictures by Raphael, but, the
design being prevented by his premature death, the projected tapestries
have no better substitute than paper-hangings. The roof, which is flat
at top, and coved or vaulted at the sides, is painted in compartments by
Michael Angelo, with frescos representing the whole progress of the world
and of mankind from its first formation by the Almighty . . . . till
after the flood. On one of the sides of the chapel are pictures by
Perugino, and other old masters, of subsequent events in sacred history;
and the entire wall behind the altar, a vast expanse from the ceiling to
the floor, is taken up with Michael Angelo's summing up of the world's
history and destinies in his "Last Judgment."

There can be no doubt that while these frescos continued in their
perfection, there was nothing else to be compared with the magnificent
and solemn beauty of this chapel. Enough of ruined splendor still
remains to convince the spectator of all that has departed; but methinks
I have seen hardly anything else so forlorn and depressing as it is now,
all dusky and dim, even the very lights having passed into shadows, and
the shadows into utter blackness; so that it needs a sunshiny day, under
the bright Italian heavens, to make the designs perceptible at all. As
we sat in the chapel there were clouds flitting across the sky; when the
clouds came the pictures vanished; when the sunshine broke forth the