[1] For the original of these passages we refer the scholar to that
admirable letter of Bacon's, De mirabile potestate artis et naturae,
etc., which appeared first of all in the work of Claudius Celestinus,
De his quae mundo mirabiliter eveniunt, Lutetiae Parisiorum,
1542. Bacon's description of a flying machine, of which we read in
the same document, shows, however, that he too, in his philosophical
visions, was apt to transgress the line of the possibilities.
[2] At the end of the nineteenth century the Saxon element had
almost entirely disappeared from the English tongue; even the most
intelligible Norman words had had to give way to the most miraculous
novelties in the shape of bad Greek and Latin compounds. At the
revival of the genuine national dialect all such abominable mongrels
as telegram, bicycle, velocipede, etc., were expelled from decent
conversation. A telegram became a wire-message; a bicycle a two-wheel;
a velocipede a swift-foot; post-mortem examinations went by the name of
after-death examinations; and as the language gained in nationality,
the nation's mind grew in clearness. The change was a change for
the better.