many instances of bad taste, Carlo Rainaldi and Bernini, who is said to have finished it in this year. But many other lesser minds contributed to its construction or embellishment, as Carlo Fontana, the author of a good description of the edifice, Vignola, Pirrho Ligorio, Antonio Cannevari, and a dozen or more lesser men, who were successively employed to bring the building to its present state.

NEXT to the wonderful cupola of Michelangiolo, is the beautiful peristyle or colonnade, that encircles the Piazza di San Pietro, in front of the Cathedral, the work of Bernini. It consists of two hundred and eighty columns, and forty-eight pilasters, each forty feet high, raised on three lofty steps. The entablature is surmounted by a balustrade, on the pedestals of which are placed eighty-eight colossal statues of saints, fifteen feet in height.

THIS magnificent work of Bernini, forms the frame of the picture, the setting of the jewel, and has delighted the eye of every man of taste, from this year of its opening to the present hour, and no period in the history of this vast edifice, could have been more appropriately chosen, for a nominal completion, than when Innocent X. proclaimed the Cathedral of St. Peter finished.

HAVING Commemorated the artists, from whose minds the gorgeous structure emanated, a brief notice of their patrons, whose knowledge of their abilities for the task, selected them to accomplish the great work, should follow. Bramante's special patron was the

A. D. 1648]

JULIUS II. AND OTHER POPES.

35

warlike Julius II., who employed the mighty Michelangiolo to execute a bronze statue of his Holiness, to be placed in a church in Bologna. The Pope was represented in the act of bestowing the Papal benediction, with an outstretched hand; but with so stern and proud an air, that the people asked the artist, if he meant to represent him as bestowing blessings or curses? During the progress of the work, Michelangiolo asked the haughty Pontiff, if he should place a book in his other hand?" No," replied Julius," let me "hold a sword; I am no man of letters." This scene, perhaps, gave rise to the mock-heroic parody of it, in the same place, between little Christina of Sweden and Michael Dahl, a century and a half afterwards, as mentioned in a previous page. This statue was overthrown, when Julius directed in person the thunders of his material artillery against the Bolognese, and, by order of the Duke of Ferrara, was cast into a cannon, a fit representative of the blood-thirsty original. The great work was continued by Leo X., whose unworthy zeal in procuring funds for its progress, by the corruptest means, raised up Luther, "the Monk who "shook the world," and that Reformation, which paralysed the Papal power throughout Christendom. Then Clement VII., Paul III., Julius III., Marcellus II., Paul IV., Gregory XIII, Sextus V., Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., Clement VIII., contemporary with our Elizabeth, Leo XI., Paul, Gregory XV., the two last coeval with our James I., Urban VIII.,

and finally Innocent X., the munificent patron of Bernini.

WHILE these works of peace were thus proceeding, and the future architect of the greatest cathedral of the reformed religion was unconsciously preparing for the mighty task of rebuilding a destroyed metropolis, and its hundred churches-protestant England was torn by a destructive civil war, the papal kingdom of Naples was devastated by an infuriated fisherman, Masaniello, and his desperate followers, and France, with all the heroism with which her poets endowed their great Monarch, was also a prey to the civil wars of the Fronde, that were so much promoted by the clever, but unprincipled Cardinal de Retz, who has described them in an animated manner, in his interesting and instructive memoirs of his own life.

THE year in which the youthful Wren published his Latin translation of Oughtred's key to the mathematics, witnessed the termination of the civil war in England, by the execution of the King. Charles was an elegant and accomplished Prince, and distinguished by the possession of most of the virtues that add dignity to private life, being eminently temperate, chaste and religious, possessing a refined taste in literature and the fine arts, a liberal patron of their professors, and a king who did more towards the arts that soften and humanize mankind than any of his predecessors. Yet he wanted firmness and decision, had little self reliance, therefore, was perpetually the victim of zealous and imprudent ministers, and too often

A. D. 1650] NAPLES, MASIENELLO AND THE FRONDE.

37

of specious evil-minded and sometimes wicked men. He was continually in error, even to the tyrannical stopping of a ship, in which some of the leading puritans of the country, among whom were Sir Arthur Hazelrig, John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell, were about to embark to join their persecuted brethren in New England; although, perhaps, his intentions were to act wisely.

WHO can develop the secret views of an omniscient Providence? What evils, and, perhaps, what good might not England have escaped if the sailing of that ship had not been stopped. So true is it that man proposes and God disposes. King Charles little thought he was forcibly bringing back the men who ware destined to defeat him at Marston Moor, Newbury and Nazeby, to try him before the High Court of Parliament for high treason against his people, an impossible crime, in the school of the right divine of Kings, in which he had been educated; and although by law he was as absolute a sovereign as any in Europe, was uncle by marriage to Louis XIV. and was benefitted by the interposition of many Foreign powers in his behalf, and by the devotion of many private friends and ministers who took the crimes he was charged with upon themselves, his powerful and enraged enemies gave their unhappy monarch but three days to prepare himself to appear before his GOD: and in the face of an oppressed people, who sought liberty of conscience and freedom from arbitrary tyranny, and of astonished Europe, was deprived of all ensigns of

royalty, and led to the block as a tried and convicted traitor.

HAD the times, his people, and, above all, his ministers, been as propitious, as peaceful, and as well-intentioned as the misguided Monarch, that dam in the intellectual and civilizing stream which was beginning to fertilize the country would not have been created, nor the people thrown back a century or more in the knowledge and love of art. The King's fine collection of pictures, statues and other works of art, were shamefully dispersed, injured or destroyed. War was declared against the arts, and the churches, cathedrals and other religious establishments pillaged and ravaged. Painted glass, pictures, statues, monumental brasses and records, books, &c. of unknown value, destroyed by the iconoclastic Puritans.

WHATEVER disturbing causes interrupted the harmony of the rest of the nation, they do not appear to have assailed the quiet cell of the persevering Wren. In this, his eighteenth year, he proceeded to the degree of B.A., and is recorded by Dr. Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, Dr. Hooke, in his preface to Micographia, Sir Paul Neil, Dr. Wilkins and other high authorities, as being the first inventor of the Micrographic Art, that is, of delineating minute objects as they appear enlarged in a microscope. In these works he was occasionally assisted by Dr. Hooke, whose knowledge of drawing, acquired under the tuition of Sir Peter Lely, enabled him to add his graphic skill to this collection of micrographic delineations. Dr.