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passes the limits of country and claims homage from all 
mankind, — MicuarL ANGELO, — in a work stamped with 
the maturity of his powers, carved a figure known to the 
world as “I Pensiero,” or Thought. . There exists in art no 
other personification of meditation, — no other type of self- 
collectedness and profound thought. 
The sculptor arrayed it not as a philosopher, as a monk, 
as an artist, as a theologian, as a scholar, nor even a8 a pope. 
And yet these different types of thinkers were not wantifig 
in the past or present of the age and country of a Raphael, 
of a Correggio, of a Leonardo da Vinci, of a Dante, of a 
Savonarola, of a Marco Polo, of a Columbus, of a Machia- 
velli, of a Galileo, of a St. Francis de Assis, of a St. Thomas 
Aquinas, of a Julius IL., of a Leo X., and of a Clement 
VIL « d 
How, then, has Michael Angelo arrayed his personified 
“Thought”? In the garb of a Soxprer, upon the breast 
the cuirass, upon the brow, wrapt in meditation, the iron 
casque of the man of war. The great sculptor has divined 
the mysterious cause why, among all people, among all 
classes, and in all epochs, the soldier is honored. Instinct 
teaches the people, and genius taught Michael Angelo, that 
among so many glorious examples, among so many immo 
victims, so many illustrious martyrs or devotees of thought, 
ill ; aN age or a country, the soldier stands forth pre- 
cslitacnale 3 in all ages and in all countries, the victim always 
ready, the defender always armed, the servant, the apostles, 
and the martyr. 
It is the Christian version of the ancient allegory which 
made Minerva issue from the brain of Jupiter: Minerva, oF 
wisdom armed, the helmet upon her brow, the sword in her 
‘Will the foregoing paragraphs, which I have translated 
