Of the mal, unchained elements, to teach
Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works.
Learn to conform the order of our lives.

LESSON CII.

ARCHIMEDES.

WINTHROP.

1. ARCHIMEDES was born in the year 287 before the chris tian era, in the island of Sicily, and city of Syracuse. Of his childhood and early education we know absolutely nothing, and nothing of his family, save that he is stated to have been one of the poor relations of King Hiero, who came to the throne when Archimedes was quite a young man, and of whose royal patronage he more than repaid whatever measure he may have enjoyed. There is no more characteristic anecdote of this great philosopher than that relating to his detection of a fraud in the composition of the royal crown. Nothing, certainly, could more vividly illustrate the ingenuity, the enthusiasm, and the complete concentration and abstraction of mind, with which he pursued whatever problem was proposed to him.

2. King Hiero, or his son Gelon, it seems, had given out a certain amount of gold to be made into a crown, and the workman to whom it had been intrusted had at last brought back a crown of corresponding weight. But a suspicion arose that it had been alloyed with silver, and Archimedes was applied to by the king, either to disprove or to verify the allegation. The great problem, of course, was to ascertain the precise bulk of the crown in its existing form; for, gold being so much heavier than silver it is obvious that if the weight had been in any de

gree made up by the substitution of silver, the buk would be proportionately increased. Now, it happened that Archimedes went to take a bath while this problem was exercising his mind, and, on approaching the bath tub, he found it full to the very brim. It instantly occurred to him that a quantity of water of the same bulk with his own body must be displaced before his body could be immersed.

3. Accordingly, he plunged in; and while the process of displacement was going on, and the water was running out, the idea suggested itself to him, that by putting a lump of gold of the exact weight of the crown into a vessel full of water, and then measuring the water which was displaced by it, and by afterward putting the crown itself into the same vessel after it had again been filled, and then measuring the water which this, too, should have displaced, the difference in their respective bulks, however minute, would be at once detected, and the fraud exposed. "As soon as he had hit upon this method of detection," we are told, “he did not wait a moment, but jumped joyfully out of the bath, and, running naked toward his own. house, called out with a loud voice, that he had found what he had sought. For, as he ran, he called out in Greek, Eureka, Eureka!"

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4. No wonder that this veteran geometer, rushing through the thronged and splendid streets of Syracuse, naked as a pair of his own compasses, and making the welkin ring with his triumphant shouts no wonder that he should have rendered the phrase, if not the guise, in which he announced his success, familiar to all the world, and that "Eureka, Eureka," should thus have become the proverbial ejaculation of successful invention and discovery in all ages, and in all languages, from that day to this! The solution of this problem is supposed to have led the old philosopher not merely into this ecstatical exhibition of himself, but into that line of hydrostatical investigation and experiment which after vard secured him such lasting renown.

And thus the accidents of a defective crown and an overflowing bath-tub gave occasion to some of the most remarkable demonstrations of ancient science.

LESSON CIII.

PARRHASIUS AND THE CAPTIVE.

WILLIS.

"PARRHASIUS, a painter of Athens, amongst those Olynthian captives Philip of Macedon brought home to sell, bought one very old man; and when he had him at his house, put him to death with extreme torture and torment, the better, by his example, to express the pain and passions of his Prometheus, whom he was thea about to paint."-Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

1. THERE stood an unsold captive in the mart,
A gray-haired and majestical old man,
Chained to a pillar. It was almost night,
And the last seller from his place had gone,
And not a sound was heard but of a dog
Crunching beneath the stall a refuse bone,
Or the dull echo from the pavement rung,
As the faint captive changed his weary feet.
2. 'Twas evening, and the half-descended sun
Tipped with a golden fire the many domes
Of Athens, and a yellow atmosphere
Lay rich and dusky in the shaded street,
Through which the captive gazed.

3. The golden light into the painter's room
Streamed richly, and the hidden colors stole
From the dark pictures radiantly forth,
And in the soft and dewy atmosphere,
Like forms and landscapes, magical they lay."
Parrhasius stood, gazing, forgetfully,

4.

5.

6.

7.

Upon his canvas.

There Prometheus lay

Chained to the cold rocks of Mount Caucasus,
The vulture at his vitals, and the links
Of the lame Lemnian festering in his flesh;
And, as the painter's mind felt through the dim,
Rapt mystery, and plucked the shadows forth
With its far-reaching fancy, and with form
And color clad them, his fine, earnest eye,
Flashed with a passionate fire, and the quick curl
Of his thin nostril, and his quivering lip

Were like the winged god's, breathing from his flight.

"Bring me the captive now!

My hands feel skillful, and the shadows lift
From my waked spirit airily and swift,
And I could paint the bow

Upon the bended heavens; around me play
Colors of such divinity to-day.

"Ha! bind him on his back!

Look! as Prometheus in my picture here!
Quick! or he faints! stand with the cordial near!
Now-bend him to the rack!

Press down the poisoned links into his flesh!
And tear agape that healing wound afresh!

"So, let him writhe! How long

a fine

Will he live thus? Quick, my good pencil, now
What
agony works upon his brow!
Ha! gray-haired, and so strong!

How fearfully he stifles that short moan!
Gods! if I could but paint a dying groan!

"Pity' thee! So I do!

I pity the dumb victim at the altar,

But does the rob'd priest for his pity falter?.
I'd rack thee though I knew

A thousand lives were perishing in thine-
What were ten thousand to a fame like mine?

"Yet there's a deathless name!

A spirit that the smothering vault shall spurn,
And like a steadfast planet mount and burn;
And though its crown of flame

Consumed my brain to ashes as it shone,
By all the fiery stars, I'd bind it on!

“Ay, though it bid me rifle

My heart's last fount for its insatiate thirst—
Though every life-strung nerve be maddened first;
Though it should bid me stifle

The yearning in my throat for my sweet child,
And taunt its mother till my brain went wild

"All-I would do it all—

Sooner than die, like a dull worm, to rot―
Thrust foully into earth to be forgot!

O heavens-but I appal

Your heart, old man! forgive- -ha! on your lives
Let him not faint!-rack him till he revives!

"Vain-vain-give o'er. His eye

11.

Glazes apace.

He does not feel you now;

Stand back! I'll paint the death-dew on his brow!
God! if he do not die

But for one moment-one-till I eclipse
Conception with the scorn of those calm lips!

12. "Shivering! Hark! he mutters
Brokenly now that was a difficult breath—
Another? Wilt thou never come, oh, death!
Look! how his temples flutter!

Is his heart still? Aha! lift up his head!
He shudders, gasps, Jove help him! so, he's dead.