Buonaparte, in answer to one who had spoken of his being in a sound sleep up to the moment when one of his great battles was to be fought, as a proof of the calmness of his mind and command over anxious thoughts, said frankly, 'that he slept because, from bodily exhaustion, he could not help it.' In like manner it is noticed that criminals, on the night previous to their execution, seldom awake before they are called, a proof that the body is the master of us far more than we need be willing to allow.
Should this note by any possible chance be seen by any of my countrymen who might have been in the Gallery at the time (and several persons were there) and witnessed such an indecorum, I hope he will give up the opinion which he might naturally have formed to my prejudice.
312.

*_Florence_.
'Rapt above earth,' and the following one.

[XXI.-II.] However, at first, these two Sonnets from M.Angelo may seem in their spirit somewhat inconsistent with each other, I have not scrupled to place them side by side as characteristic of their great author, and others with whom he lived.

I feel, nevertheless, a wish to know at what periods of his life they were respectively composed.

The latter, as it expresses, was written in his advanced years, when it was natural that the Platonism that pervades the one should give way to the Christian feeling that inspired the other.