60S KAA'SAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



upon herself a fairer form, art blossomed into most fragrant fruition, science it- 

 self awoke from its sleep and began its wonderful course. The marble gods that 

 had lain so long beneath the earth arose from their graves and reasserted their 

 dominion over the souls as they had formerly wielded it over it the minds of men. 

 Here lived and wrought Leonardo Da Vinci, the most versatile and comprehen- 

 sive intellect the world has ever seen; Angelo, the greatest power that ever 

 worked on stone; Raffaelle, the soul of beauty and grace, with his pencil dipped 

 in the colors of Paradise; Titian, who stole from the sunset the secret of its hues; 

 Gallileo, Columbus, and many others. These were the men who lived with, or im- 

 mediately preceded, Michael Angelo. It was the renaissance, the morning after 

 the night. As Italy is above all others the land of the renaissance, so is 

 Florence above all other places in Italy the city of its new birth. There is scarce- 

 ly a street in that beautiful city, or a square, that has not something to say of the 

 brilliant glories it once shared. One walks the city guided by memory rather 

 than by vision. The old families still give their names to the streets. The whole 

 ■city is filled with ghosts, even in whose pallor we can read what was the blush 

 and bloom of her flowering days. 



Then brilliantly and gracefully, the lecturer drew a brilliant and graceful 

 sketch of the Tuscan capital in the days of its glory, and described the treasures 

 of art that are heaped there — the Duomo, the Campanile, the Palazzo Vecehi, its 

 beautiful churches, its wonderful statues, its marvelous paintings. Lingering a 

 moment over the mighty memories of Brunelleschi, of Dante, whose statue the 

 city jealously guards, though the justly indignant poet would not let her have his 

 bones; of Savanarola, of Giotto, and the hundreds of other names that have im- 

 mortalized la bella Florenzji, he briefly sketched the life, the works, the character 

 of Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Poet, painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, he 

 was supreme in each and unapproached in all. Born in 1474, of noble, if not of 

 royal blood, he lived and worked incessantly for ninety years. His capacity for 

 ■work was marvelous. He accomplished the impossible, and overcame the insu- 

 perable. As a sculptor, his grand and glowing genius is above the rules of the 

 schools, having sought and found on the white steeps beyond human power the 

 law which governs and the soul which inspires his wonderful creations. No 

 name other than that of Phidias may be mentioned with his. As an artist he 

 taught even Raffaelle, and the latter learned from the lesson a still more graceful 

 touch and a still loftier, serener beauty. As an architect, the grandest fabric 

 ever vyrought by man swings in the mid air of Rome to attest his supreme genius, 

 the dome of St. Peter's, which is the lofty brow encasing the brain of the church. 

 As an engineer, the stubborn defense of his native Florence is a competent wit- 

 ness that as a soldier he could have been as great as an artist. As a poet, though 

 he swept no Lydian strains from his lyre, yet the clear, sweet, piercing melody of 

 his song sweeps the eternal heights with no uncertain sounds. As a man he was 

 well nigh perfect. His sentiments were cast in the same mould as was his lofty 

 intellect. Pure, high minded, magnanimous, generous, brave, just, and true, his 

 fc unspotted by a single stain, there is nothing sordid, nothing mean, nothing 



