Page:Essays of Francis Bacon 1908 Scott.djvu/31

Rh back into France again, with intention to continue for some years there." He remained about two years, spending most of the time in Paris, but following the French Court to Blois, Tours, and Poictiers. Henry III, of Valois, was the French King and Catharine de' Medici the queen mother. The wars and intrigues of the Holy League were going on and the events stirring which led to the assassination of Henry III. The essays, Of Revenge, Of Custom and Education, and Of Prophecies, allude to the political and social influences that surrounded the young attaché of the English ambassador. In Prophecies, "one Dr. Pena" tells the inquiring lad a story about an astrologer and "the queen mother, who was given to curious arts." Another personal allusion to his stay in France occurs in the sixth book of the De Augmentis Scientiarum where he describes a biliteral cipher he invented in the intervals of his diplomatic leisure in Paris. Writing in cipher was a curious art then widely practised, and Bacon's early interest in it reveals the natural turn of his mind for the observation of signs, that is, facts, and their recombination into new relations. Distinctly scientific is the observation of an echo at Pont-Charenton, near Paris, which the young diplomat investigated and reports in Sylva Sylvarum (Century III. 249, 251). "And thereby I did hap to find that an echo would not return S, being but a hissing and an interior sound." The description was written many years later, but the boy's experiment had remained perfectly clear and fresh. He says he heard the echo Rh