beautiful, and that terrestrial beauty was merely its reflected glory,
was too strong even for them. Thus we have seen Suso translating the
beauty of the earthly spring to the kingdom of heaven.

At the same time men were beginning to travel to distant countries for
the sole purpose of seeing new scenes and acquiring fresh knowledge. The
famous Venetian, Marco Polo, was the first European who (in 1300)
visited Central Asia, crossed China and Thibet, and brought news to
Europe of the fairyland of Japan. Sight-seeing as an end in itself was
discovered. Long sea-voyages for commercial purposes were no novelty,
but no human foot had ever trod the summits of the Lower Alps, unless it
had been the foot of a peasant whose cattle had strayed. Petrarch was
the first man (in 1336) to climb a barren mountain, the Mont Ventoux in
Provence, voluntarily undergoing a certain amount of fatigue for sheer
delight in the beauty of nature. This was a great, an immortal deed,
greater than all his sonnets and treatises put together. In a long
letter which has been preserved to us, he describes with much spirit and
erudition this extraordinary ascent, before whose profound significance
all the Alpine exploits of our time shrink into paltry gymnastic
exercises.

The beauty of nature discovered and appreciated, interest began to be
evinced in the relationship existing between the various phenomena and
there arose a desire to obtain ocular proof of what was written in the
venerable books--perhaps even make new discoveries. The first man of any
importance in this direction was the German Albrecht Bollstaedt (Albertus
Magnus), who, although he contributed more than any other man to the
promulgation of Aristotelian philosophy, wrote a book on natural history
founded on personal observation; his great English contemporary,
however, Roger Bacon, is the true father of modern experimental science.
It was he who coined the expression "scientia experimentalis," and
framed the principle that all research must be based on the study of
nature. He maintained that experience was the "mistress of all
sciences," and said: "I respect Aristotle and account him the prince of
philosophers, but I do not always share his opinion. Aristotle and the
other philosophers have planted the tree of science, but the latter has
not by any means put forth all its branches or matured all its fruit."
This thought, though it seems to us self-evident, was of great moment in
the ag