Roger Bacon was the first Englishman who is known to have cultivated alchemical philosophy. This learned man was born in 1214, near Ilcester, in Somerset. He made extraordinary progress in the preliminary studies of boyhood; when his age permitted he entered the order of St Francis, and passed from Oxford to Paris, where he learned mathematics and medicine. On his return he applied himself to languages and philosophy, and made such progress that he wrote grammars of the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues. Pronouncing the panegyric of Bacon, Figuier calls him the greatest intellect which has arisen in England, a student of nature who was more physician than chemist, and a scientist to whom the world owes many extraordinary discoveries. He was almost the only astronomer of his time, and to him we are indebted for the rectification of the Julian Calendar, in regard to the solar year, which in 1267 he submitted to Clement IV., but which was not put in practice till the pontificate of Gregory. The physical analysis of the properties of lenses and convex glasses, the invention of spectacles and achromatic lenses, the theory, and possibly the first construction, of the telescope, are all due to the superior and penetrating genius of Bacon. An adequate notion of his schemes in mechanical science may be gathered from one of his own letters--_Epistola Fratris Rogerii Baconis de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturæ et de nullitate Magiæ_, Hambourg, 1618. Having undertaken to demonstrate that by the help of natural science it is possible to actually perform the pretended prodigies of magic, he further assures us that machines may be constructed for navigation without the aid of rowers, in such a manner that vessels will be borne through the water with extraordinary velocity, under the direction of a single man. “It is equally possible to construct cars which may be set in motion with marvellous rapidity, independently of horses or other animals. Flying machines may also be made, the man seated in the centre, and by means of certain contrivances beating the air with artificial wings.” In the same way Bacon anticipated the invention of the crane, diving apparatus, suspension bridges, &c. These things, he declares, were known to the ancients, and may still be recovered. “Should we be surprised,” demands one of his biographers, “if all these prodigies obtained for him the name of magician in an age of superstition and ignorance? the friars of his own order refused to let his works into their library, as if he were a man who ought to be proscribed by society. His persecution increased till, in 1278, he was imprisoned and forced to confess his repentance of his pains in the arts and sciences. He was constrained to abandon the house of his order, and to form a retreat where he might work in quiet.”