was entirely through wells, and wells on the top of a hill are apt to run dry. Thirst, therefore, was probably a far stronger factor in times of siege than the cowardice of her inhabitants, and the city must often have been driven to capitulate through the terrible need of water, rather than through the fear of foreign arms. As the city grew, a sense of inadequacy on this particular point grew too, and people began to wonder how water could be procured from some fresh running spring upon the neighbouring hills; yet to bring it up to such a height seemed to the Perugians an almost insuperable difficulty. An early genius nearly solved it for them, but like other early geniuses he failed. In 1254 Frate Plenario, an obscure preaching friar, wandering through the woods and hills around Perugia, conceived, what in those days seemed the most hazardous scheme, of bringing water into the piazza of the city by means of a large aqueduct from the hill of Monte Pacciano, which lies three miles or so to the north of the town. Plenario urged his scheme upon the magistrates, they approved it, and after certain difficulties as to the necessary funds they determined to embark on the adventurous undertaking. Frate Plenario was put at the head of the works, and Messer Bonomi chosen as architect. But the plan was large, the execution very difficult. The arches were built too small and fragile, and carried at too low a level. They fell to ruin in the woods, and the poor little priest and his friend Bonomi vanished with the desolation of their works. Their plans, however, never died, they merely remained to be carried out by stronger if not subtler minds. In 1274 the question of a fountain again became paramount in Perugia. More solid channels were built across the hills and the ambitious magistrates called in the most skilled sculptors of the day to decorate a receptacle for the precious water when it should arrive. It came for the first time on the 15th of February 1280, and we can fancy the joyful pride of the citizens as they saw it running over the lovely marble and brass basins which had been so carefully prepared for it.