dream thus: "There may be made some flying instrument so that
a man sitting in the middle of the instrument and turning some
mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may
beat the air like a bird flying."

But he lived too long before his time. His ruin lay not only
in his superior genius, but also in his fearless outspokenness.
He presently fell under the ban of the Church, through which he
lost alike his liberty and the means of pursuing investigation.
Had it been otherwise we may fairly believe that the "admirable
Doctor," as he was called, would have been the first to show
mankind how to navigate the air. His ideas are perfectly easy
to grasp. He conceived that the air was a true fluid, and as
such must have an upper limit, and it would be on this upper
surface, he supposed, as on the bosom of the ocean, that man
would sail his air-ship. A fine, bold guess truly. He would
watch the cirrus clouds sailing grandly ten miles above him on
some stream that never approached nearer. Up there, in his
imagination, would be tossing the waves of our ocean of air.
Wait for some little better cylinders of oxygen and an improved
foot-warmer, and a future Coxwell will go aloft and see; but as
to an upper sea, it is truly there, and we may visit and view
its sun-lit tossing billows stretching out to a limitless
horizon at such times as the nether world is shrouded in densest
gloom. Bacon's method of reaching such an upper sea as he
postulated was, as we have said, by a hollow globe.

"The machine must be a large hollow globe, of copper or other
suitable metal, wrought extremely thin so as to have it as
light as possible," and "it must be filled with ethereal air or