itory, was endowed by nature with aptitudes, faculties, and
sensibilities so varied, as to deserve the name of universal genius.
Italy in the Renaissance period was rich in natures of this sort, to
whom nothing that is strange or beautiful seemed unfamiliar, and who,
gifted with a kind of divination, penetrated the secrets of the world
by sympathy. To Pico della Mirandola, Lionardo da Vinci, and Michel
Agnolo Buonarroti may be added Leo Battista Alberti. That he achieved
less than his great compeers, and that he now exists as the shadow of
a mighty name, was the effect of circumstances. He came half a century
too early into the world, and worked as a pioneer rather than a
settler of the realm which Lionardo ruled as his demesne. Very early
in his boyhood Alberti showed the versatility of his talents. The use
of arms, the management of horses, music, painting, modelling for
sculpture, mathematics, classical and modern literature, physical
science as then comprehended, and all the bodily exercises proper to
the estate of a young nobleman, were at his command. His biographer
asserts that he was never idle, never subject to ennui or fatigue. He
used to say that books at times gave him the same pleasure as
brilliant jewels or perfumed flowers: hunger and sleep could not keep
him from them then. At other times the letters on the page appeared to
him like twining and contorted scorpions, so that he preferred to gaze
on anything but written scrolls. He would then turn to music or
painting, or to the physical sports in which he excelled. The language
in which this alternation of passion and disgust for study is
expressed, bears on it the stamp of Alberti's peculiar temperament,
his fervid and imaginative genius, instinct with subtle sympathies and
strange repugnances. Flying from his study, he would then betake
himself to the open air. No one surpassed him in running, in
wrestling, in the force with which he cast his javelin or discharged
his arrows. So sure was his aim and so skilful his cast, that he could
fling a farthing from the pavement of the square, and make it ring
against a church roof far above. When he chose to jump, he put his
feet together and bounded over the shoulders of men standing erect
upon the ground. On horseback he maintained perfect equilibrium, and
seemed incapable of fatigue. The most restive and vicious animals
trembled under him and became like lambs. There was a kind of
magnetism in the man. We read,