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but a boy, “That he was two years younger than Her Majesty’s happy reign;” with which answer the Queen was much taken.’ Another anecdote from the same source, of which more than enough has been made, belongs to this period. ‘Whilst he was commorant in the University, about sixteen years of age (as his lordship hath been pleased to impart unto myself), he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle; not for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; ‘being a philosophy (as his lordship used to say) only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of the production of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued to his dying day.’

The story which has been told above of the iron pillar in the chamber at Trinity shows that Bacon’s attention had been very early directed to the observation of sounds, and lends a probability to the supposition that it may have been at this time that he tried the experiment recorded in the Sylva Sylvarum (cent. ii. 140). ‘There is in St. James’s Fields a conduit of brick, unto which joineth a low vault; and at the end of that a round house of stone; and in the brick conduit there is a window; and in the round-house a slit or rift of some little breadth; if you cry out in the rift, it will make a fearful roaring at the window.’ In all this there is a certain ring of boyishness. To this time also belongs the story of the conjuror (Sylva, cent. x. 946), who must have exhibited his tricks at Sir Nicholas Bacon’s house before Francis left England.

But his father had in view for him a public career as statesman or diplomatist, and after he had spent nearly three years over his books at Cambridge, sent him to France to read men. On the 25th of September, 1576, we learn from Burghley’s diary, ‘Sir Amyas Paulet landed at Calliss going to be Amb. at France in Place of Dr. Dale.’ It was not till the February following that he succeeded to the post. Bacon apparently joined him after his arrival in Paris, for on Nov. 21, 1576, he was admitted of the grand company at Gray’s Inn, having