colours of small flies and worms, grains and flaws in gems, which cannot otherwise be seen.”  To-day we have the microscope.  He says “we have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances,” yet in those days no one had dreamed of a telephone.  “We imitate also flights of birds; we have some degrees of flying in the air.  We have ships and boats for going under water,” yet in those days stories of flying-ships or torpedoes would have been treated as fairy tales.

Bacon did not finish The New Atlantis.  “The rest was not perfected” are the last words in the book and it was not published until after his death.  These words might almost have been written of Bacon himself.  A great writer, a great man,—­but “The rest was not perfected.”  He put his trust in princes and he fell.  Yet into the land of knowledge—­

    “Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;
    The barren wilderness he passed,
    Did on the very border stand
    Of the blest promised land,
    And from the mountain’s top of his exalted wit
    Saw it himself and shew’d us it. 
    But life did never to one man allow
    Time to discover worlds and conquer too;
    Nor can so short a line sufficient be,
    To fathom the vast depths of nature’s sea. 
    The work he did we ought t’admire,
    And were unjust if we should more require
    From his few years, divided twixt th’ excess
    Of low affliction and high happiness. 
    For who on things remote can fix his sight
    That’s always in a triumph or a fight."*

    Abraham Cowley, To the Royal Society.

You will like to know, that less than forty years after Bacon’s death a society called The Royal Society was founded.  This is a Society which interests itself in scientific study and research, and is the oldest of its kind in Great Britain.  It was Bacon’s fancy of Solomon’s House which led men to found this Society.  Bacon was the great man whose “true imagination"* set it on foot, and although many years have passed since then, the Royal Society still keeps its place in the forefront of Science.

Thomas Sprat, History of Royal Society, 1667.

BOOKS TO READ

The New Atlantis, edited by G. D. W. Bevan, modern spelling (for schools).  The New Atlantis, edited by G. C. Moore Smith, in old spelling (for schools).

Chapter LIV ABOUT SOME LYRIC POETS

BEFORE either Ben Jonson or Bacon died, a second Stuart king sat on the throne of England.  This was Charles I the son of James VI and I. The spacious days of Queen Elizabeth were over and gone, and the temper of the people was changing.  Elizabeth had been a tyrant but the people of England had yielded to her tyranny.  James, too, was a tyrant, but the people struggled with him, and in the struggle they grew stronger.  In the days of Elizabeth the religion of England was still unsettled.  James decided that the religion of England must be Episcopal, but as the reign of James went on, England became more and more Puritan and the breach between King and people grew wide, for James was no Puritan nor was Charles after him.