This is pitiable. This was not the work for a great genius like him, but for a common stone-cutter. What waste of time and energy to no purpose,—nay, to worse than no purpose,—to the danger, often the irreparable injury, of the statue. A dull, plodding, patient workman would have done it far better. It is as if an architect should be employed in planing the beams or laying the bricks and stones of the building he designed. In fact, Michel Angelo injured, and in some cases nearly ruined, most of his statues by the very impatience of his genius. Thus the back head of the Moses has been struck away by one of these blows, and everywhere a careful eye detects the irreparable blow beyond its true limit. This is not the Michel Angelo whom we are to reverence and admire; this is an _abbozzatore_ roughing out the work. There is no difficulty in striking off large cleavings of marble at one stroke—any one can do that; and it is pitiable to find him so engaged. Where we do find his technical excellence as a sculptor is when he comes to the surface—when with the drill he draws the outline with such force and wonderful precision—when his tooth-chisel models out, with such pure sense of form and such accomplished knowledge, the subtle anatomies of the body and the living curves of the palpitant flesh; and no sculptor can examine the colossal figures of the Medici Chapel without feeling the free and mighty touch of a great master of the marble. Here the hand and the mind work together, and the stone is plastic as clay to his power. It was not until Michel Angelo was sixty years of age that, on the death of Antonio San Gallo, he was appointed to succeed him as architect, and to design and carry out the building of St. Peter’s, then only rising from its foundations. To this appointment he answered, as he had before objected when commissioned to paint the Sistine Chapel, “Architecture is not my art.” But his objections were overruled. The Pope insisted, and he was finally prevailed upon to accept this commission, on the noble condition that his services should be gratuitous, and dedicated to the glory of God and of His Apostle, St. Peter; and to this he was actuated, not only by a grand sentiment, but because he was aware that hitherto the work had been conducted dishonestly, and with a sole view of greed and gain. Receiving nothing himself, he could the more easily suppress all peculation on the part of others.