ogriff
of Zephyrus with the rosy wings, or of the diabolical inventions of the
middle ages, for many of which the stake was the only reward.

Roger Bacon, in the thirteenth century, inaugurated a more scientific
era. In his "Treaty of the Admirable Power of Art and Nature," he puts
forth the idea that it is possible "to make flying-machines in which the
man, being seated or suspended in the middle, might turn some winch or
crank, which would put in motion a suit of wings made to strike the
air like those of a bird." In the same treatise he sketches a
flying-machine, to which that of Blanchard, who lived in the eighteenth
century, bears a certain resemblance. The monk, Roger Bacon, was worthy
of entering the temple of fame before his great namesake the Lord
Chancellor, who in the seventeenth century inaugurated the era of
experimental science.

Jean Baptiste Dante, a mathematician of Perugia, who lived in the latter
part of the fifteenth century, constructed artificial wings, by means of
which, when applied to thin bodies, men might raise themselves off
the ground into the air. It is recorded that on many occasions he
experimented with his wings on the Lake Thrasymenus. These experiments,
however, had a sad end. At a fete, given for the celebration of the
marriage of Bartholomew d'Alvani, Dante, who must not be confounded with
the poet, whose flights were of quite another kind--offered to exhibit
the wonder of his wings to the people of Perugia. He managed to raise
himself to a great height, and flew above the square; but the iron
with which he moved one of his wings having been bent, he fell upon the
church of the Virgin, and broke his thigh.

A similar accident befell a learned English Benedictine Oliver of
Malmesbury. This ecclesiastic was considered gifted with the power of
foretelling events; but, like other similarly circumstanced, he does
not seem to have beer able to divine the fate which awaited himself.
He constructed wings after the model of those which according to Ovid,
Daedalus made use of. These he attached to his arms and his feet, and,
thus furnished, he threw himself from the height of a tower. But the
wings bore him up for little more than a distance of 120 paces. He fell
at the foot of the tower, broke his legs, and from that moment led a
languishing life. He consoled himself, however, in his misfortune
by saying that his attempt must certainly have succeeded had he only
provided himself with a tai