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172
Wonderful Balloon Ascents; Or, The Conquest of the Skies
·
Fulgence Marion
14
A
similar
accident
befell
a
learned
English
Benedictine
Oliver
of
Malmesbury.
This
ecclesiastic
was
considered
gifted
with
the
power
of
foretelling
events;
but,
like
other
similarly
circumstanced,
he
does
not
seem
to
have
beer
able
to
divine
the
fate
which
awaited
himself.
He
constructed
wings
after
the
model
of
those
which
according
to
Ovid,
Daedalus
made
use
of.
These
he
attached
to
his
arms
and
his
feet,
and,
thus
furnished,
he
threw
himself
from
the
height
of
a
tower.
But
the
wings
bore
him
up
for
little
more
than
a
distance
of
120
paces.
He
fell
at
the
foot
of
the
tower,
broke
his
legs,
and
from
that
moment
led
a
languishing
life.
He
consoled
himself,
however,
in
his
misfortune
by
saying
that
his
attempt
must
certainly
have
succeeded
had
he
only
provided
himself
with
a
tail.
Before
going
further,
let
us
take
notice
that
the
seventeenth
century
is,
par
excellence,
the
century
distinguished
for
narratives
of
imaginary
travels.
It
was
then
that
astronomy
opened
up
its
world
of
marvels.
The
knowledge
of
observers
was
vastly
increased,
and
from
that
time
it
became
possible
to
distinguish
the
surface
of
the
moon
and
of
other
celestial
bodies.
Thus
a
new
world,
as
it
were,
was
revealed
for
human
thought
and
speculation.
We
learned
that
our
globe
was
not,
as
we
had
supposed,
the
centre
of
the
universe.
It
was
assigned
its
place
far
from
that
centre,
and
was
known
to
be
no
more
than
a
mere
atom,
lost
amid
an
incalculable
number
of
other
globes.
The
revelations
of
the
telescope
proved
that
those
who
formerly
were
considered
wise
actually
knew
nothing.
Quickly
following
these
discoveries,
extraordinary
narratives
of
excursions
through
space
began
to
be
given
to
the
world.
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