of his native country.  He constructed machines which suddenly raised up in the air the ships of the enemy in the bay before the city, and then let them fall with such violence into the water that they sunk; he also set them on fire with his burning glasses.  Polybius, Livy, and Plutarch speak in detail, with wonder and admiration, of the machines with which he repelled the attacks of the Romans.  When the town was taken and given up to pillage, the Roman general gave strict orders to his soldiers not to hurt Archimedes, and even offered a reward to him who should bring him alive and safe to his presence.  All these precautions proved useless, for the philosopher was so deeply engaged at the time in solving a problem, that he was even ignorant that the enemy were in possession of the city, and when a soldier entered his apartment, and commanded him to follow him, he exclaimed, according to some, “Disturb not my circle!” and to others, he begged the soldier not to “kill him till he had solved his problem”; but the rough warrior, ignorant of the august person before him, little heeded his request, and struck him down.  This happened B.C. 212, so that Archimedes, at his death, must have been about 75 years old.  Marcellus raised a monument over him, and placed upon it a cylinder and a sphere, thereby to immortalize his discovery of their mutual relations, on which he set a particular value; but it remained long neglected and unknown, till Cicero, during his questorship of Sicily, found it near one of the gates of Syracuse, and had it repaired.  The story of his burning glasses had always appeared fabulous to some of the moderns, till the experiments of Buffon demonstrated its truth and practicability.  These celebrated glasses are supposed to have been reflectors made of metal, and capable of producing their effect at the distance of a bow-shot.

THE TRIALS OF GENIUS.

FILIPPO BRUNELLESCHI.

This eminent architect was one of those illustrious men, who, having conceived and matured a grand design, proceed, cool, calm, and indefatigable, to put it in execution, undismayed by obstacles that seem insuperable, by poverty, want, and what is worse, the jeers of men whose capacities are too limited to comprehend their sublime conceptions.  The world is apt to term such men enthusiasts, madmen, or fools, till their glorious achievements stamp them almost divinely inspired.

Brunelleschi was nobly descended on his mother’s side, she being a member of the Spini family, which, according to Bottari, became extinct towards the middle of the last century.  His ancestors on his father’s side were also learned and distinguished men—­his father was a notary, his grandfather “a very learned man,” and his great-grandfather “a famous physician in those times.”  Filippo’s father, though poor, educated him for the legal or medical profession; but such was his passion for art and mechanics, that his father, greatly against his