Rome who flew so well and high as to lose his life thereby.
Here, at any rate, was an honest man, or the story would not
have ended thus; but of the rest--and there are many who in
early ages aspired to the attainment of flight--we have no more
reason to credit their claims than those of charlatans who
flourish in every age.

In medieval times we are seriously told by a saintly writer
(St. Remigius) of folks who created clouds which rose to heaven
by means of "an earthen pot in which a little imp had been
enclosed." We need no more. That was an age of flying saints,
as also of flying dragons. Flying in those days of yore may
have been real enough to the multitude, but it was at best
delusion. In the good old times it did not need the genius of
a Maskelyne to do a "levitation" trick. We can picture the
scene at a "flying seance." On the one side the decidedly
professional showman possessed of sufficient low cunning; on
the other the ignorant and highly superstitious audience, eager
to hear or see some new thing--the same audience that, deceived
by a simple trick of schoolboy science, would listen to
supernatural voices in their groves, or oracular utterances in
their temples, or watch the urns of Bacchus fill themselves
with wine. Surely for their eyes it would need no more than
the simplest phantasmagoria, or maybe only a little black
thread, to make a pigeon rise and fly.

It is interesting to note, however, that in the case last cited
there is unquestionably an allusion to some crude form of
firework, and what more likely or better calculated to impress
the ignorant! Our firework makers still manufacture a "little