ON THE HISTORY OF MECHANICS. 185 



practical mechanics and every art that is concerned in satisfying the wants 

 of life, as ignoble and sordid ; and resting all his hopes of fame on those 

 works, in which the magnificent and the elegant are exhibited uncontami- 

 nated by the imperfections of the material world : works that are com- 

 parable to nothing else that the mind of man has produced ; in which the 

 subject only contends with the mode of treating it, the magnitude and 

 beauty of the one being rivalled by the accuracy and vigour of the other. 

 It is impossible that propositions more difficult and important should be 

 deduced from simpler and purer elements. Some attribute this excellence 

 to his natural genius, others to his indefatigable application, which has 

 given to every thing that he has attempted the appearance of having been 

 performed with ease. For we might ourselves search in vain for a demon- 

 stration of his propositions ; but so smooth and direct is the way by which 

 he leads us, that when we have once passed it, we fancy that we could 

 readily have found it without assistance. We may, therefore, easily give 

 credit to what is said of him, that being as it were fascinated by this 

 domestic syren that bore him company, he often neglected his food and 

 his clothing ; that when sometimes brought by compulsion to the baths, he 

 used to draw his figures in the ashes of the fire places, and to make his 

 calculations upon the cosmetics that were employed by the attendants ; 

 deriving, like a true votary of the muses, every pleasure from an intellec- 

 tual origin. Among all his beautiful discoveries, he is said to have chosen 

 that of the proportion of the sphere and cylinder for his sepulchral honours ; 

 requesting of his friends that they would place on his tomb a cylinder con- 

 taining a sphere, and inscribe on it the ratio which he had first determined. 



" By artifice, and through the thoughtlessness and security of a day of 

 festivity, the Romans at length obtained possession of Syracuse, and in the 

 pillage, although orders had been issued that the life of Archimedes should 

 be spared, he was killed by a private soldier. His death is variously 

 related, but all accounts agree that Marcellus was deeply concerned for his 

 loss, that he held his assassin in abhorrence, and conferred distinguished 

 favours on his surviving relations." This event is supposed to have hap- 

 pened about 212 years before the birth of Christ ; and the cultivation of 

 mechanical philosophy, which had been continued for four hundred years 

 with increasing success, was almost wholly interrupted for eighteen cen- 

 turies. 



There lived, however, in the mean time, some mathematicians and 

 mechanics of considerable merit. A work on warlike machines, addressed 

 to Marcellus by Athenaeus, is still extant, and may be found in the splendid 

 collection of writers on military mechanics entitled Mathematici Veteres. 

 Ctesibius of Alexandria was about a century later than Archimedes ; he 

 enriched hydraulics with several valuable machines ; although he contri- 

 buted little to the advancement of theoretical investigation. Hero was of 

 the same school, and his pursuits were similar ; some of his treatises on 

 hydraulics, pneumatics, and mechanics, are published in the collection of 

 Ancient mathematicians, and some others are still extant in manuscript. 

 We are informed by Pappus, that Hero and Philo had referred the proper- 

 ties of the lever, the wheel and axis, the pulley, the wedge, and the screw, 



