in Catholic countries.

Be these things as they may--and the exact truth of them will now be
never known--Vesalius set out to Jerusalem in the spring of 1564. On his
way he visited his old friends at Venice to see about his book against
Fallopius. The Venetian republic received the great philosopher with
open arms. Fallopius was just dead; and the senate offered their guest
the vacant chair of anatomy. He accepted it: but went on to the East.

He never occupied that chair; wrecked upon the Isle of Zante, as he was
sailing back from Palestine, he died miserably of fever and want, as
thousands of pilgrims returning from the Holy Land had died before him. A
goldsmith recognised him; buried him in a chapel of the Virgin; and put
up over him a simple stone, which remained till late years; and may
remain, for aught I know, even now.

So perished, in the prime of life, "a martyr to his love of science," to
quote the words of M. Burggraeve of Ghent, his able biographer and
commentator, "the prodigious man, who created a science at an epoch when
everything was still an obstacle to his progress; a man whose whole life
was a long struggle of knowledge against ignorance, of truth against
lies."

Plaudite: Exeat: with Rondelet and Buchanan. And whensoever this poor
foolish world needs three such men, may God of His great mercy send them.

PARACELSUS {13}

I told you of Vesalius and Rondelet as specimens of the men who three
hundred years ago were founding the physical science of the present day,
by patient investigation of facts. But such an age as this would
naturally produce men of a very different stamp, men who could not
imitate their patience and humility; who were trying for royal roads to
knowledge, and to the fame and wealth which might be got out of
knowledge; who meddled with vain dreams about the occult sciences,
alchemy, astrology, magic, the cabala, and so forth, who were reputed
magicians, courted and feared for awhile, and then, too often, died sad
deaths.

Such had been, in the century before, the famous Dr. Faust--Faustus, who
was said to have made a compact with Satan--actually one of the inventors
of printing--immortalised in Goethe's marvellous poem.

Such, in the first half of the sixteenth century, was Cornelius Agrippa--a
doctor of divinity and a knight-at-arms; secret-service diplomatist to
the Emperor Maximilian in Austria; astrologer, though unwilling, to his
daughter Margaret, Regen