Part 16

The result soon justified his expectations. The first number was published on the 4th of February, 1832. Thirty thousand copies were sold in a few days, and three weeks later the sale rose to fifty thousand copies a week.

HOW A BOY WAS HIRED OUT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

When Michael Angelo was twelve years of age, although he had had no instruction in art, he did a piece of work which greatly pleased the painter Domenico Ghirlandajo. That artist at once declared that here was lad of genius, who must quit his school studies and become a painter.

This was what the little Michael most wished to do, but he had no hope that his father would listen for a moment to the suggestion. His father, Ludovico Buonarotti, was a distinguished man in the state, and held art and artists in contempt. He had planned a great political career for his boy, as the boy knew very well.

Ghirlandajo was enthusiastic, however, and, in company with the lad, he at once visited Ludovico, and asked him to place Michael in his studio.

Ludovico was very angry, saying that he wished his son to become a prominent man in society and politics, not a dauber and a mason; but when he found that young Michael was determined to be an artist or nothing he gave way, though most ungraciously. He would not say that he consented to place his son with Ghirlandajo; he would not admit that the study of art was study, or the studio of an artist anything but a shop. He said to the artist: "I give up my son to you. He shall be your apprentice or your servant, as you please, for three years, and you must pay me twenty-four florins for his services."

In spite of the insulting words and the insulting terms, Michael Angelo consented thus to be hired out as a servant to the artist, who should have been paid by his father for teaching him. He had to endure much, indeed, besides the anger and contempt of his father, who forbade him even to visit his house, and utterly disowned him. His fellow-pupils were jealous of his ability, and ill-treated him constantly, one of them going so far as to break his nose with a blow.

When Michael Angelo had been with Ghirlandajo about two years, he went one day to the Gardens of St. Mark, where the Prince Lorenzo de' Medici--who was the foremost patron of art in Florence--had established a rich museum of art-works at great expense. One of the workmen in the garden gave the boy leave to try his hand at copying some of the sculptures there, and Michael, who had hitherto studied only painting, was glad of a chance to experiment with the chisel, which he preferred to the brush. He chose for his model an ancient figure of a faun, which was somewhat mutilated. The mouth, indeed, was entirely broken off, but the boy was very self-reliant, and this did not trouble him. He worked day after day at the piece, creating a mouth for it of his own imagining, with the lips parted in laughter and the teeth displayed.

When he had finished, and was looking at his work, a man standing near asked if he might offer a criticism.

"Yes," answered the boy, "if it is a just one."

"Of that you shall be the judge," said the man.

"Very well. What is it?"

"The forehead of your faun is old, but the mouth is young. See, it has a full set of perfect teeth. A faun so old as this one is would not have perfect teeth."

The lad admitted the justice of the criticism, and proceeded to remedy the defect by chipping away two or three of the teeth, and chiselling the gums so as to give them a shrivelled appearance.

The next morning, when Michael went to remove his faun from the garden, it was gone. He searched everywhere for it, but without success. Finally, seeing the man who had made the suggestion about the teeth, he asked him if he knew where it was.

"Yes," replied the man, "and if you will follow me I'll show you where it is."

"Will you give it back to me? I made it, and have a right to it."

"Oh, if you must have it, you shall."

With that he led the way into the palace of the prince, and there, among the most precious works of art in the collection, stood the faun. The young sculptor cried out in alarm, declaring that the Prince Lorenzo would never forgive the introduction of so rude a piece of work among his treasures of sculpture. To his astonishment the man declared that he was himself the Prince Lorenzo de' Medici, and that he set the highest value upon this work.

"I am your protector and friend," he added. "Henceforth you shall be counted as my son, for you are destined to become one of the great masters of art."

This was overwhelming good-fortune. Lorenzo de' Medici was a powerful nobleman, known far and wide to be a most expert judge of works of art. His approval was in itself fame and fortune.

Filled with joy, the lad went straightway to his father's house, which he had been forbidden to enter, and, forcing his way into Ludovico's presence, told him what had happened. The father refused to believe the good news until Michael led him into Lorenzo's presence.

When the prince, by way of emphasizing his goodwill, offered Ludovico any post he might choose, he asked for a very modest place indeed, saying, with bitter contempt, that it was good enough "for the father of a mason."

THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

Precisely at what time the faithful and affectionate subjects of his Majesty Ivan IV., Czar of all the Russias, conferred upon him his pet name, "The Terrible," history neglects to inform us, but we are left in no uncertainty as to the entire appropriateness of the title, which is now inseparably linked with his baptismal name. He inherited the throne at the age of three years, and his early education was carefully attended to by his faithful guardians, who snubbed and scared him, in the hope that they might so far weaken his intellect as to secure a permanent control over him, and through him govern Russia as they pleased. They made a footstool of him sometimes, and a football at others, and, under their system of training, the development of those qualities of mind and heart for which he is celebrated was remarkably rapid. He was always Ivan the Terrified, and he became Ivan the Terrible before he was old enough to have played a reasonably good game of marbles, or to have become tolerably expert in the art of mumbling the peg. Indeed, it seems that the young grand-prince was wholly insensible to the joys of these and the other excellent sports in which ordinary youths delight, and being of an ingenious turn of mind, he invented others better suited to his tastes and character. One of these pastimes--perhaps the first and simplest one devised by the youthful genius--consisted in the dropping of cats, dogs, and other domestic animals from the top of the palace to the pavement below, and sentimental historians have construed these interesting experiments in the law of gravitation into acts of wanton cruelty. Another of the young czar's amusements was to turn half-famished pet bears loose upon passing pedestrians, and it is the part of charity to suppose that his purpose in this was to study the psychological and physiognomical phenomena of fear. A less profitable way he had of accomplishing the same thing was by throwing, or, as youthful Americans phrase it, "shying," stones at passers-by, concealing himself meanwhile behind a screen. He cultivated his skill in horsemanship by riding over elderly people, cripples, and children. In short, his boyish sports were all of an original and highly interesting sort.

Up to the age of thirteen Ivan was under the tutelage of a council, of which the Prince Shnisky was chief, and it was this prince who domineered over the boy and made a footstool and a football of his body. At that age Ivan asserted his independence in a very positive and emphatic way, which even the Prince Shnisky could not misapprehend. The young czar was out hunting, accompanied by Shnisky and other princes and boyards, among whom was Prince Gluisky, a rival of Shnisky's, who was prejudiced against that excellent gentleman. At his suggestion, Ivan addressed his guardian Shnisky in language which the latter deemed insolent. Shnisky replied angrily, and Ivan requested his dogs to remonstrate with the prince, which they did by tearing him limb from limb.

Having thus silenced the dictation of Shnisky, the young prince became the ward of the no less excellent Gluisky, and was carefully taught that the only way in which he could effectually assert authority was by punishment. It was made clear to his budding intellect, too, that the shortest, simplest, and altogether the best way to get rid of disagreeable persons was to put them to death, and throughout his life Ivan never forgot this lesson for a single moment. Power, he was told, was worthless unless it was used, and the only way in which it could be really used was by oppression. For three years no pains were spared to teach him this system of ethics and politics, and the young prince, in his anxiety to perfect himself in the art of governing, diligently practised all these precepts.

When he was seventeen years of age he was formally crowned czar. The citizens, ignorant of the truths of political economy and the principles of governmental science underlying the young Czar's system, became alarmed, and fired the city one night. When Ivan awoke, he was terrified, being of an abnormally nervous temperament, and the apparition of a warning monk, together with the influence of Anastasia, the young czarina, led the czar to abandon the simple and straightforward methods of government in which he had been bred, and for thirteen years, under the dictation of Alexis Adascheff and the monk Sylvester, Ivan devoted himself to the commonplace employments of developing Russia politically and socially. He dismissed his ministers and put others in their places. He reorganized the army; revised the code, in the interest of abstract justice; equalized assessments; subdued the Tartars; established forts for the protection of the frontiers; laid the foundation for the future greatness of his empire; began the work which was completed so grandly under Peter the Great; introduced printing into Russia; added greatly to her possessions; checked the abuses of the clergy; brought artists from western Europe, and in a hundred ways made himself famous by doing those things which historians love to chronicle.