278 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



earnest.' I venture, by the way, to offer a solution 

 of the mystery, which will doubtless be at once ac- 

 cepted. Observe that 6*66 shillings amount apprecia- 

 bly to 6s. 8d., a fee which may be called the Devil's 

 Own. The Devil's Own Fee expressed in the deci- 

 mal system (which is itself Antichrist, according to 

 some), presents very naturally the number of the 

 beast. 



The following will interest those who have read cer- 

 tain controversies about perspective in the correspond- 

 ence columns of the English Mechanic : ' Mr. Parsey 

 was an artist who made himself conspicuous by a new 

 view of perspective. Seeing that the sides of a tower, 

 for instance, would appear to meet in a point if the 

 tower were high enough, he thought that these sides 

 ought to slope to one another in the picture. On this 

 theory he published a small work (of which I have not 

 the title) with a Grecian temple in the frontispiece ; 

 stated, if I remember rightly, to be the first picture 

 which had ever been drawn in true perspective. Of 

 course, the building looked very Egyptian with its 

 sloping sides. The answer to his notion is easy 

 enough. What is called the picture is not the picture 

 from which the mind takes its perception ; that pic- 

 ture is on the retina. The intermediate picture, as it 

 may be called, the human artist's work, is itself seen 

 perspectively. If the tower were so high that the 

 sides, though parallel, appeared to meet in a point,, 

 the picture must also be so high that the picture 

 sides, though parallel, would appear to meet in a point 



