figures sadly glimmered into something like visibility,--the Almighty
moving in chaos,--the noble shape of Adam, the beautiful Eve; and,
beneath where the roof curves, the mighty figures of sibyls and prophets,
looking as if they were necessarily so gigantic because the thought
within them was so massive. In the "Last Judgment" the scene of the
greater part of the picture lies in the upper sky, the blue of which
glows through betwixt the groups of naked figures; and above sits Jesus,
not looking in the least like the Saviour of the world, but, with
uplifted arm, denouncing eternal misery on those whom he came to save. I
fear I am myself among the wicked, for I found myself inevitably taking
their part, and asking for at least a little pity, some few regrets, and
not such a stern denunciatory spirit on the part of Him who had thought
us worth dying for. Around him stand grim saints, and, far beneath,
people are getting up sleepily out of their graves, not well knowing what
is about to happen; many of them, however, finding themselves clutched by
demons before they are half awake. It would be a very terrible picture
to one who should really see Jesus, the Saviour, in that inexorable
judge; but it seems to me very undesirable that he should ever be
represented in that aspect, when it is so essential to our religion to
believe him infinitely kinder and better towards us than we deserve. At
the last day--I presume, that is, in all future days, when we see
ourselves as we are--man's only inexorable judge will be himself, and the
punishment of his sins will be the perception of them.

In the lower corner of this great picture, at the right hand of the
spectator, is a hideous figure of a damned person, girdled about with a
serpent, the folds of which are carefully knotted between his thighs, so
as, at all events, to give no offence to decency. This figure represents
a man who suggested to Pope Paul III. that the nudities of the "Last
Judgment" ought to be draped, for which offence Michael Angelo at once