achievement in fresco ever executed, was begun on the 10th of May, 1508, in the thirty-third year of the artist's age. The equally wonderful if not equally admirable work, the great fresco of the Last Judgment, painted on the western wall of the chapel, was begun (according to the generally received account, which, however, Mr. Wilson thinks is somewhat too early) in 1534, twenty-six years subsequently to the finishing of the vault, and was finished in the sixty-sixth year of the artist's age.

The work undertaken by Michelangelo - to paint in fresco the entirety of the vault of the Sistine Chapel - involved the covering with designs and with color more than ten thousand square feet of surface, and the artist's first care was to find some persons capable of acting as his assistants. The plan followed was first to design and draw to scale the plan for the ornamentation of the whole; then to prepare the cartoons, or working drawings, for his assistants to work after. "A modern master," says Mr. Wilson, "would in the same position also provide colored studies for the guidance of his assistants. This does not appear to have been common among the great masters of the sixteenth century. No such colored sketches remain, although cartoons have been preserved. Michelangelo provided sketches executed in chalk showing the chiaroscuro, and fullsized outlines for transfer to the vault; and he must have trusted to verbal instructions for the color, and to his own example. He had also to prepare and lay off the general plan of the architectural division of the vault in conformity with his design; this framework must have been designed and drawn to scale, and marked off upon the vault before the painting could be commenced. The completed work shows how great was the pains which was taken, how accurate the calculations and measurements must have been, before the scheme was matured. The more the vault and its paintings are studied, the more the real marvels of their history will be appreciated and distinguished from the paltry legends of the biographers."

All Michelangelo's plans, as regarded the securing of assistance failed. It was very soon found that the persons engaged were incapable of working with Michelangelo, or of transferring to the plaster designs conceived in a style wholly new to them, and far in advance of the art of the time. They had to be paid for their journey from Florence to Rome, for they were all Florentines, and for the time they had lost, and be dismissed. "He

then girded himself for his great task," says Mr. Wilson; "it was in an exceptional sense only that it has been said that he painted alone and unaided. It cannot be true; for in fresco painting on such a scale solitary work is a practical impossibility." Further on he remarks that "the stories that he ground his own colors," and prepared the lime to paint on, though so often repeated, are manifestly absurd. He required hundredweights of color and lime! How could he possibly prepare the quantity required alone and unaided? . . . . But while the great artist's proceedings and reputation have been veiled under idle tales by his first biographers, since so frequently repeated, his greatest work is also veiled by the barbarous neglect and maltreatment to which it has been exposed, and it is now seen from the floor of the chapel so imperfectly that his purposes in the design and execution of it cannot be properly appreciated. This is possible only by close examination of the frescos from a position as elevated as the scaffold erected by Michelangelo. Under very favorable circumstances such an examination has been made of a portion of the vault [i. e. by the writer]; and the interest which this great work of genius has excited for centuries, and now excites perhaps more than ever, may, it is hoped, be an excuse for giving the results of the examination with some minuteness of detail."

"The entire composition contains three hundred and forty-three figures, varying in their proportions, infinite in invention, full of life and of movement. The vault is alive with figures of mighty beings, the offspring of the exhaustless and noble inspiration of Michelangelo. . . . . A careful examination of the frescos shows that Michelangelo adhered throughout to his sketch. Unhappily it is lost; but it is easy to see that it sprang from his brain complete in every part. . . . . It is not to be understood that in his first sketch he drew every figure and group as we now see them painted. But every part of his subject was present to his mind; he indicated his general idea; placed groups and figures where he intended them to be in his finished work; shadowed forth the entire composition; and from that first creation he never swerved." The "figures in the uppermost part of the vault measure from ten to twelve feet in height, with certain exceptions. The Prophets and Sibyls would be nearly eighteen feet, if erect; and the ancestors of our Lord in the lunettes are colossal. . . . . It would appear,

from his sketches of draped figures, as well as from the finished paintings, that he provided costumes for his models. There are many slight details and accidents of fold which must have been imitated from the reality. . . . . Artists most frequently transferred the outline of the cartoon to the wet and yielding surface of the plaster by placing the former upon the latter, and then firmly passing over its lines with a point or stylus, which indented the plaster through the paper. Michelangelo prepared the process which is called pouncing. This can be seen in his frescos. The cartoons were nailed to the wall during the process. The nail-holes are observable in the fresco of the Last Judgment; and in that of Ezekiel, in one of the pendentives of the ceiling, an original nail still remains in its place close to this figure. Michelangelo's motive for avoiding the more usual method of pressing in the outline with the stylus through the paper is quite evident. He disliked the disturbance of the surface which it involves, which was inconsistent with his ideas of refinement of execution. But he did not therefore altogether reject the use of his instrument. When the outline was pounced, he appears to have passed round it with a point as sharp as a penknife, so fine is the cut, and it is easily distinguished from the line passed through the paper; for, besides its sharpness, the instrument has frequently broken out a morsel of lime, where the hand has stopped. He did not draw in the features in this manner, but marked in the muscles in the beautiful figure of Adam, and possibly in others. Evidently he varied his practice, sometimes using it, sometimes omitting it. Drapery he generally marked in with the point in very rapid sweeps, and sometimes adhered to these lines, at others not.. So far as could be observed, the group of children on the piers have been painted without any outline at all; a single guiding perpendicular line ruled between them on the wet plaster sufficed to enable him to paint them at once in their places without other preparation. The architecture is outlined with the stylus, and the lines are often carried over part of the figures. This is common in old frescos. It shows that subject and background were painted. simultaneously; and this is very evident in Michelangelo's work; for he often cut the plaster away from his finished day's painting at some distance from the outline of the figure. Thus he avoided hardness of contour. The lesson is an important one, especially to modern fresco painters.

"The plaster upon which he painted was brought to a very even and polished surface. Unfortunately there are many chips in it now, by which it is seen that it is pure white. It must, therefore, be composed of Roman lime and marble dust, as no sand would give so beautiful a surface, or show so white a substance when it is broken. . . . . The plaster at the present time is hard and sound, except where it is torn into fissures by movements in the masonry, arising from obviously defective construction, and possibly in part from slight shocks of earthquake, which at rare intervals are felt at Rome.

"No artist has suffered more from misrepresentations of his design by imitators, copyists, and engravers than Michelangelo. His work has been presented to the world in many forms, which miss his beauties, and exaggerate what are believed to be his defects." It may be useful here to observe that this wonderful work, the vault of the Sistine Chapel, may be seen now to better purpose than has ever been the case heretofore, in the most admirable photographs by Braun of Dornach. As Mr. Wilson remarks, it is impossible to form any due conception of the work by seeing it in its present state from the floor of the chapel. And of course it is out of the question for the ordinary visitor to cause such a scaffolding to be erected as Mr. Heath Wilson did. I have myself seen all the best engravings of the frescos on the Sistine vault, but never had any adequate idea of the grandeur of them, till I saw them in Braun's large photographs.

Michelangelo called himself a sculptor; and on several occasions, when requested to execute paintings, excused himself on the plea that painting was not his profession. And certainly the productions of his chisel are among the grandest that that day, the high tide of art, has bequeathed to us. But my own impression is that these frescos in the Sistine Chapel excel other paintings to a much greater degree than any of the marbles we have from his hand excel the works of his contemporaries. The reader may be assured that till he has examined these and comprehended them aright, he can have no conception approaching to the reality of the inexhaustible invention, and (what in a yet more remarkable degree outtops all contemporary and all subsequent art) the almost superhuman grandeur and sublimity of the expression he knew how to impart to the human face and figure.

T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.

THE chief products of Liberia are sugar and coffee and indiarubber. The best plantations of coffee and sugar are on the St. Paul's. Up this river are the chief settlements. There lies, more than on the sea-shore, the future of America in Africa. The river is very broad and handsome, as broad and handsome as the Hudson. For about forty miles, or as far up as the Connecticut, it is navigable for sloops and even larger craft. For four miles back from the river coffee is cultivated. It is sold for twenty cents a pound, gold, at Monrovia, which gives it a higher valuation in New York than the Java. It is being exported now to Ceylon to replace the coffee of that island, itself among the best in the world. Three dollars, gold, a bushel is paid for it at Monrovia for this purpose. It is also being planted in Southern California. The coffee-tree is usually a trim, compact, small tree, not over twenty feet high nor fifteen feet wide at its widest part. The annual production is already very large and steadily increasing.

The two chief coffee-farms are those of Mr. Dorsey, a Liberian, and Messrs. E. S. Morris & Co., of Philadelphia, whose exposition of Liberian products at the Centennial attracted great and deserved attention. They have on their farm on the St. Paul's, which they have leased for twenty-five years, thirteen thousand coffee-trees. Thirty pounds have been taken from a tree in one season; two and a half pounds is the average. This would give for the yield of this place over thirty thousand pounds a year. Suppose neglect or blight reduced that one half, and we have fifteen thousand pounds, worth three thousand dollars, as the annual produce of a single plantation. Mr. Rix, of Clay Ashland, raises from ten to fifteen thousand pounds annually. The last vessel to New York, which arrived last June, had over eighty thousand pounds in its invoice. That portion which the shippers held was sold for twenty-five cents a