other objects that the rays shall be refracted and bent toward any place we please, so that we shall see the object near at hand, or at a distance, under any angle we please; and thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest letters, and may number the smallest particles of sand, by reason of the greatness of the angle under which they appear." He knew the "wisdom of the ancients" in the cataloguing of the stars, and suggested a reform of the calendar--following the then unknown poet-astronomer of Naishapur. But he believed in astrology, that bastard science which from remotest times had ruled the life of man, and which has no small number of votaries among ourselves to this day. Roger Bacon's abiding title to fame rests, however, on his insistence on the necessity of experiment, and his enforcement of this precept by practice. As a mathematician he laid stress on the application of this "first of all the sciences"; indeed, as "preceding all others, and as disposing us to them." His experiments, both from their nature and the seclusion in which they were made, laid him open to the charge of black magic, in other words, of being in league with the devil. This, in the hands of a theology thus "possessed," became an instrument of awful torture to mankind. Roger Bacon's denial of magic only aggravated his crime, since in ecclesiastical ears, this was tantamount to a denial of the activity, nay more, of the very existence of Satan. So, despite certain encouragement in his scientific work from an old friend who afterward became Pope Clement IV., for whose information he wrote his Opus Majus, he was, on the death of that potentate, thrown into prison, whence tradition says he emerged, after ten years, only to die.