The year Sixteen Hundred Nine is forever fixed in history, through the fact that in that year Galileo invented the telescope. Every good thing is an evolution. "Specilla," or helps to read, had been made, and sold privately and mysteriously, as early as the year Fourteen Hundred. These first magnifying-glasses were associated with magic, or wonder-working; the words "magnify" and "magic" having a common source and a similar meaning. Magicians wore big square glasses, and by their aid, some of them claimed to see things at a great distance; and also to perceive things stolen, hidden or lost. Occasionally, the magician would persuade his customer to try on the glasses, and then even common men could see for themselves that there was something in the scheme--goodness me! The use of spectacles was at first confined entirely to these wonder-workers--or men who magnified things forever. During the Fifteenth Century, public readers and occasionally priests wore spectacles. To read was a miracle to most people, and a book was a mysterious and sacred thing--or else a diabolical thing. The populace would watch the man put on his "specillum," and the idea was everywhere abroad that the magic glasses gave an ability to read; and that anybody who was inspired by angels, or devils, who could get hold of spectacles, could at once read from a book. We hear of one magician who, about the year Fifteen Hundred, made a box with a glass cover that magnified the contents. This great man would catch a flea and show it to the people. Then he would place the flea in the box and show it to them, and they would see that it had grown enormously in an instant. The man could make it big or little, by just taking off and putting on the cover of the box! This individual worked wonders for a consideration, but Fate overtook him and he was smothered under a feather bed for having too much wizard in his cosmos. A wizard, be it known, is a male witch, and the Bible says, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," although it does not say anything about wizards. But please note this: the wizard who had that magic box and flea had really the first microscope. Galileo bought a pair of "magic glasses," or spectacles, about the year Sixteen Hundred Seven; and his action, in so doing, was freely criticized. On a visit to Venice, where glass had been manufactured since long before the Flood, Galileo was looking through one of the glass-factories, just as visitors do now, and one of the workmen showed him a peculiar piece of glass which magnified the hairs on the back of his hand many times. In a very few days after this, Galileo heard that a Dutch spectacle-maker had placed certain queer-shaped pieces of glass in a tube, and offered to sell this tube to the Government, so by its use, soldiers could see the movements of an enemy many miles away.