science,
[Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular
callings. Thus, "Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge," is styled (Rolls
Parl. 6, p. 273) Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, "History
of England," vol iv. p. 6. Burke, "History of Richard III."] and
contrived to make their deceptions profitable to some unworthy political
purpose, appear to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while
those who, occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits
uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were despatched
without mercy. The mathematician and astronomer Bolingbroke (the
greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as a wizard, while
not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited a certain Friar
Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which greatly befriended
Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.

Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran high
against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled conditions
of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it appears that
certain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a special anathema in
the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused of having sought, "by
subtle imagination," the destruction of the original makers of hats and
bonnets by man's strength,--that is, with hands and feet; and an act of
parliament was passed (22d of Edward IV.) to put down the fabrication
of the said hats and bonnets by mechanical contrivance.] so probably,
in the very instinct and destiny of Genius which ever drive it to a war
with popular prejudice, it would be towards such contrivances that a
man of great ingenuity and intellect, if studying the physical sciences,
would direct his ambition.

Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his philosopher
(Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a conception so
much in advance of the time, they who have examined such of the works
of Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best decide; but
the assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most acknowledged
prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important question will
obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have constructed his model,
but whether, having so constructed it, the fate that befell him was
pro