At last necks and eyes grew tired, and when Mr. Sumner saw this, he
asked all to sit for a time on one of the benches, in a corner apart
from others who were there.

"I know just how you feel," he said. "You are disappointed. The frescoes
are so far above our heads; their colors are dull; they are disfigured
by seams; there are so many subjects that you are confused and weary.
You are already striving to retain their interest and importance by
connecting them with the personality of their creator, and are
imagining Michael Angelo swung up there underneath the vault, above his
scaffoldings, laboring by day and by night during four years. You are
beginning in the wrong place to rightly comprehend the work.

"It is the magnitude of Michael Angelo's _conceptions_ that puts him
among the very first of painters; and it is the conception of these
frescoes that makes them the most notable paintings in the world. We
must dwell on this for a moment. When the work was begun it was the
artist's intention to paint on the end wall, opposite the altar, the
Fall of Lucifer, the enemy of man, who caused sin to befall him. This
was never accomplished. Then he designed to cover the ceiling (as he
did) with the chief Biblical scenes of the world's history that are
connected with man's creation and fall--to picture all these as looking
directly forward to Christ's coming and man's redemption; and then to
complete the series, as he afterward did, by painting this great _Last
Judgment_ over the altar. Is it not a stupendous conception?

"Let your eyes run along the ceiling as I talk. God is represented as a
most superbly majestic Being in the form of man. He separates light from
darkness. He creates the sun and moon. He commands the waters to bring
forth all kinds of fish; the earth and air to bring forth animal life.