The philosopher who discovered the immediate revived, and he returned to his favourite seclusion cause of the rainbow did not rest in the proximate in Gray's Inn, from whence, on the 2d of April, cause, but raised his thoughts to Him who placeth either in his way to Gorhambury, or when making his bow in the heavens. "Very beautiful it is in an excursion into the country, with Dr. Witherthe brightness thereof: it compasseth the heaven bone, the king's physician, it occurred to him, as about with a glorious circle, and the hand of the he approached Highgate, the snow lying on the Most High hath bended it." ground, that it might be deserving consideration, whether flesh might not be preserved as well in snow as in salt; and he resolved immediately to try the experiment. They alighted out of the coach, ❘ and went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate Hill, and bought a hen, and stuffed the body with snow, and my lord did help to do it himself. The snow chilled him, and he immediately fell so extremely ill, that he could not return to Gray's Inn, but was taken to the Earl of Arundel's house, at Highgate, where he was put into a warm bed, but it was damp, and had not been slept in for a year before. Hence, therefore, Bacon said in his youth, and repeated in his age, "It is an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism, but a farther proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion; for in the entrance of philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of man, if it dwell and stay there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest cause; but when a man passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence of causes, and the works of Providence; then, according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the foot of Jupiter's chair." The testimony of his friends is of the same nature. His chaplain and biographer, Dr. Rawley, says, "That this lord was religious and conversant with God, appeareth by several passages throughout the whole current of his writings. He repaired frequently, when his health would permit him, to the service of the church; to hear sermons; to the administration of the sacrament of the blessed body and blood of Christ; and died in the true faith established in the Church of England." Whether Sir Thomas Meautys or Dr. Rawley could be found does not appear; but a messenger was immediately sent to his relation, the Master of the Rolls, the charitable Sir Julius Cæsar, then grown so old, that he was said to be kept alive beyond nature's course, by the prayers of the many poor whom he daily relieved. He instantly attended his friend, who, confined to his bed, and so enfeebled that he was unable to hold a pen, could still exercise his lively fancy. He thus wrote to Lord Arundel: "I was likely to have had the fortune of Cajus Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the Mountain Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and His will thus opens: "I bequeath my soul and body into the hands of God by the blessed oblation of my Saviour; the one at the time of my dissolution, the other at the time of my resurrection."-induration of bodies. As for the experiment Such are the proofs of his religious opinions. His version of the Psalms was the last of his literary labours. In the autumn, he retired to Gorhambury. Good Mr. Palmer :-I thank God, by means of the sweet air of the country, I have obtained some degree of health. Sending to the court, I thought I would salute you; and I would be glad, in this solitary time and place, to hear a little from you how the world goeth, according to your friendly manner heretofore. Fare ye well, most heartily. Your very affectionate and assured friend, FR. ST. ALBAN. Gorhambury, Oct. 29, 1625. itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate I was taken with such a fit of casting as I knew not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards deed your lordship's house was happy to me; and him, but think the better of him for it. For inI kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it. "I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than my own; but, by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this In November he wrote to the Duke of Buck-fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen." ingham. This was his last letter. He died in the arms of Sir Julius Cæsar, early on the morning of Easter Sunday, the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth The severe winter which followed the infec- On opening his will, his wish to be buried at St. Albans thus appears: "For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's church, near St. Albans: there was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of Old Verulam." Of his funeral no account can be found, nor is there any trace of the site of the house where he died. may frequently be traced. His health was always delicate, and, to use his own expression, he was all his life puddering with physic. He was of a middle stature, and well propottioned; his features were handsome and expres sive, and his countenance, until it was injured by politics and worldly warfare, singularly placid. There is a portrait of him when he was only eighteen now extant, on which the artist has recorded his despair of doing justice to his sub He is buried in the same grave with his mother, ject by the inscription "Si tabula daretur digin St. Michael's church. On his monument he is represented sitting in contemplation, his hand supporting his head. FRANCISCUS BACON. BARO DE VERULA. STI: ALBNI: VICMS: SEU NOTIORIBUS TITULIS. QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENTIÆ COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR. AN° DNI MDCCVI ETAT LXVI TANTI VIRI MEM. THOMAS MEAUTYS SUPERSTITIS CULTOR DEFUNCTI ADMIRATOR HP This monument, erected by his faithful secretary, has transmitted to posterity the image of his person; and, though no statue could represent his mind, his attitude of deep and tranquil thought cannot be seen without emotion. No sculptured form gives the lineaments of Sir Thomas Meautys. A plain stone records thefact, that he lies at his master's feet. Much time will not pass away before the few letters which may now be seen upon his grave will be effaced. His monument will be found in the veneration of after times, in the remembrance of his grateful adherence to the fallen fortunes of his master, "that he loved and admired him in life, and honoured him when dead." CONCLUSION. In his analysis of human nature, Bacon considers first the general properties of man, and then the peculiar properties of his body and of his mind. This mode may be adopted in reviewing his life. He was of a temperament of the most delicate sensibility: -so excitable, as to be affected by the slightest alterations in the atmosphere. It is probable that the temperament of genius may much depend upon such pressibility, and that to this cause the excellences and failures of Bacon VOL. I.-(15) na, animum mallem." His portraits differ beyond what may be considered a fair allowance for the varying skill of the artist, or the natural changes which time wrought upon his person; but none of them contradict the description given by one who knew him well," that he had a spacious forehead and piercing eye, looking upward as a soul in sublime contemplation, a countenance worthy of one who was to set free captive philosophy." His life of mind was never exceeded, perhaps never equalled. When a child, "No childish play to him was pleasing." While his companions were diverting themselves in the park, he was occupied in meditating upon the causes of the echoes and the nature of imagination. In after life he was a master of the science of harmony, and the laws of imagination he studied with peculiar care, and well understood. The same penetration he extended to colours, and to the heavenly bodies, and predicted the modes by which their laws would be discovered, and which, after the lapse of a century, were so beautifully elucidated by Newton. The extent of his views was immense. He stood on a cliff, and surveyed the whole of nature. His vigilant observation of what we, in common parlance, call trifles, was, perhaps, more extraordinary: scarcely a pebble on the shore escaped his notice. It is thus that genius is, from its life of mind, attentive to all things, and, from seeing real union in the apparent discrepancies of nature, deduces general truths from particular instances. His powers were varied and in great perfection. His senses were exquisitely acute, and he used them to dissipate illusions, by "holding firm to the works of God and to the sense, which is God's lamp, Lucerna Dei, spiraculum hominis.” His imagination was fruitful and vivid; but he understood its laws, and governed it with absolute sway. He used it as a philosopher. It never had precedence in his mind, but followed in the train of his reason.. With her hues, her forms, and the spirit of her forms, he clothed the nakedness of austere truth. He was careful in improving the excellences, and in diminishing the defects of his understanding, whether from inability at particular times to acquire knowledge, or inability to acquire particu lar sorts of knowledge. (K 2) daily mingle with their hopes and fears, their wishes and affections. He was cradled in politics: to be lord keeper was the boundary of the horizon drawn by his parents. He lived in an age when a young mind would be dazzled, and a young heart engaged by the gorgeous and chivalric style which pervaded all things, and which a romantic queen loved and encouraged: life seem As to temporary inability, his golden rules | being; and, however he may abstract himself in were, "1st, Fix good, obliterate bad times. 2dly, his study, or climb the hill above him, he must In studies, whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself, let him set hours for it; but whatever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves."—He so mastered and subdued his mind as to counteract disinclination to study; and he prevented fatigue by stopping in due time: by a judicious intermission of studies, and by never plodding upon books; for, although he read inces-ed a succession of splendid dramatic scenes, and santly, he winnowed quickly. Interruption was only a diversion of study; and if necessary, he sought retirement. the gravest business a well acted court masque; the mercenary place-hunter knelt to beg a favour with the devoted air of a knight errant; and even Of inability to acquire particular sorts of know- sober citizens put on a clumsy disguise of galledge he was scarcely conscious. He was inte- lantry, and compared their royal mistress to Venus rested in all truths, and, by investigations in his and Diana. There was nothing to revolt a young youth upon subjects from which he was averse, and ingenuous mind: the road to power was, no he wore out the knots and stonds of his mind, and doubt, then as it is now; but, covered with tapesmade it pliant to all inquiry. He contemplated try and strewed with flowers, it could not be nature in detail and in mass: he contracted the suspected that it was either dirty or crooked. He sight of his mind and dilated it.—He saw differ- had also that common failing of genius and ardent ences in apparent resemblances, and resemblances youth, which led him to be confident of his in apparent differences.—He had not any attach-strength rather than suspicious of his weakness; ment either to antiquity or novelty. He prevented mental aberration by studies which produced fixedness, and fixedness by keeping his mind alive and open to perpetual improvement. The theory of memory he understood and explained: and in its practice he was perfect. He knew much, and what he once knew he seldom forgot. In his compositions his first object was clearness to reduce marvels to plain things, not to inflate plain things into marvels. He was not attached either to method or to ornament, although he adopted both to insure a favourable reception for abstruse truths. Such is a faint outline of his mind, which, like the sun, had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion, no quiet but in activity: it did not so properly apprehend, as irradiate the object; not so much find, as make things intelligible. There was no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining for invention; his faculties were quick and expedite: they were ready upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents; his conjectures improving even to prophecy; he saw consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn, in the womb of their causes.' How much is it to be lamented that such a mind, with such a temperament, was not altogether devoted to contemplation, to the tranquil pursuit of knowledge, and the calm delights of piety. 99 That in his youth he should quit these pleasant paths for the troubels and trappings of public life would be a cause for wonder, if it were not remembered that man amongst men is a social and it was his favourite doctrine, that the perfection of human conduct consists in the union of contemplation and action, a conjunction of the two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the planet of civil society and action; but he should have recollected that Jupiter dethroned Saturn, and that civil affairs seldom fail to usurp and take captive the whole man. He soon saw his error: how futile the end, how unworthy the means! but he was fettered by narrow circumstances, and his endeavours to extricate himself were vain. Into active life he entered, and carried into it his powerful mind and the principles of his philosophy. As a philosopher he was sincere in his love of science, intrepid and indefatigable in the pursuit and improvement of it: his philosophy is, "discover-improve." He was patientissimus veri. He was a reformer, not an innovator. His desire was to proceed, not " in aliud," but "in melius." His motive was not the love of excelling, but the love of excellence. He stood on such a height that popular praise or dispraise could not reach him. He was a cautious reformer; quick to hear, slow to speak. "Use Argus's hundred eyes before you raise one of Briareus's hundred hands,” was his maxim. He was a gradual reformer. He thought that reform ought to be, like the advances of nature, scarce discernible in its motion, but only visible in its issue. His admonition was, “ Let a living spring constantly flow into the stagnant waters." He was a confident reformer. "I have held up a light in the obscurity of philosophy, which will be seen centuries after I am dead. It will be seen amidst the erection of temples, tombs, pa not good to try experiments in states, except the necessity be urgent or the utility evident; and well to beware that it is the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation." laces, theatres, bridges, making noble roads, cut- | should be like mines, resounding on all sides ting canals, granting multitude of charters and with new works, and further progress: but it is liberties for comfort of decayed companies and corporations: the foundation of colleges and lectures for learning and the education of youth; foundations and institutions of orders and fraternities for nobility, enterprise, and obedience; but, above all, the establishing good laws for the regulation of the kingdom and as an example to the world." He was a permanent reformer.-He knew that wise reform, instead of palliating a complaint, looks at the real cause of the malady. He concurred with his opponent, Sir Edward Coke, in saying, "Si quid moves a principio moveas. Errores ad principia referre est refellere." His opinion was, that he "who, in the cure of politic or of natural disorders, shall rest himself contented with second causes, without setting forth in diligent travel to search for the original source of evil, doth resemble the slothful husbandman, who moweth down the heads of noisome weeds, when he should carefully pull up the roots; and the work shall ever be to do again." Cautious, gradual, permanent reform, from the love of excellence, is ever in the train of knowledge. They are the tests of a true reformer. Such were the principles which he carried into law and into politics. As a lawyer, he looked with micrescopic eye into its subtleties, and soon made great proficience in the science. He was active in the discharge of his professional duties: and published various works upon different parts of the law. In his offices of solicitor and attorney-general, "when he was called, as he was of the king's council learned, to charge any offenders, either in criminals or capitals, he was never of an insulting and domineering nature over them, but always tenderhearted, and carrying himself decently towards the parties, though it was his duty to charge them home, but yet as one that looked upon the example with the eye of severity, but upon the person with the eye of pity and compassion." As a judge, it has never been pretended that any decree made by him was ever reversed as unjust. As a patron of preferment, his favourite maxim was, "Detur digniori, qui beneficium digno dat omnes obligat." The desire to change he always regarded with great jealousy. He knew that in its worst form it is the tool by which demagogues delude and mislead; and in its best form, when it originates in benevolence and a love of truth, it is a passion by which kind intention has rushed on with such fearless impetuosity, and wisdom been hurried into such lamentable excess: it is so nearly allied to a contempt of authority, and so frequently accompanied by a presumptuous confidence in private judgment: a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of the old paths, merely because they are old: it has such tendency to go too far rather than not far enough; that this great man, conscious of the blessings of society, and of the many perplexities which accompany even the most beneficial alterations, always looked with suspicion upon a love of change, whether it existed in himself or in others. In his advice to Sir George Villiers he said," Merit the admonition of the wisest of men: My son, fear God and the king, and meddle not with those who are given to change.'” As a statesman his first wish was, in the true spirit of his philosophy, to preserve; the next, to improve the constitution in church and state. In his endeavours to improve England and Scotland he was indefatigable and successful. He had no sooner succeeded than he immediately raised his voice for oppressed Ireland, with an earnestness which shows how deeply he felt for her sufferings. "Your majesty," he said, "accepted my poor field-fruits touching the union, but let me assure you that England, Scotland, and Ireland, well united, will be a trefoil worthy to be worn in your crown. She is blessed with all the dowries of nature, and with a race of generous and noble people; but the hand of man does not unite with the hand of nature. The harp of Ireland is not strung to concord. It is not attuned with the harp of David in casting out the evil spirit of superstition, or the harp of Orpheus in casting out desolation and barbarism." As a statesman, he was indefatigable in his public exertions. "Men think," he said, "I In these reforms he acted with his usual caution. cannot continue if I should thus oppress myself | He looked about him to discover the straight and with business; but my account is made. The duties of life are more than life; and if I die now, I shall die before the world is weary of me, which in our times is somewhat rare." His love of reform, his master passion, maniested itself both as a statesman and as a lawyer; but, before he attempted any change, he, with his usual caution, said, "There is a great difference between arts and civil affairs; arts and sciences right way, and so to walk in it. He stood on such an eminence, that his eye rested not upon small parts, but comprehended the whole. He stood on the ancient way. He saw this happy country, the mansion-house of liberty. He saw the order and beauty of her sacred buildings, the learning and piety of her priests, the sweet repose and holy quiet of her decent Sabbaths, and that best sacrifice of humble and simple devotion, more acceptable than the fire of the temple, which went not out by | of that illustrious statesman, who, regardless of the senseless yells by which he was vilified, went right onward in the improvement of law, the advancement of knowledge, and the diffusion of charity. day or by night. He saw it in the loveliness of his own beautiful description of the blessings of government. "In Orpheus's theatre all beasts and birds assembled, and, forgetting their several appetites, some of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all sociably together, listening to the airs and accords of the harp, the sound whereof no sooner ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but every beast returned to his own nature; wherein is aptly described the nature and condition of men who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of profit, of lust, of revenge, which as long as they give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly touched with eloquence, and persuasion of books, of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace maintained; but if these instruments be silent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible, all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion." In gradual reform of the law, his exertions were indefatigable. He suggested improvements both of the civil and criminal law: he proposed to reduce and compile the whole law; and in a tract upon universal justice, "Leges Legum," he planted a seed which, for the last two centuries, has not been dormant, and is now just appearing above the surface. He was thus attentive to the ultimate and to the immediate improvement of the law: the ultimate improvement depending upon the progress of knowledge. "Veritas temporis filia dicitur, non authoritatis:" the immediate improvement upon the knowledge by its professors in power, of the local law, the principles of legislation, and general science. So this must ever be. Knowledge cannot exist without the love of improvement. The French chancellors, D'Aguesseau and L'Hôpital, were unwearied in their exertions to improve the law; and three works upon imaginary governments, the Utopia, the Atlantis, and the Armata, were written by English chancellors. So Sir William Grant, the reserved, intellectual master of the rolls, struck at the root of sanguinary punishment, when, in the true spirit of philosophy, he said, "Crime is prevented, not by fear, but by recoiling from the act with horror, which is generated by the union of law, morals, and religion. With us they do not unite; and our laws are a dead letter." So, too, by the exertions of the philosophic and benevolent Sir Samuel Romilly, who was animated by a spirit public as nature, and not terminated in any private design, the criminal law has been purified; and, instead of monthly massacres of young men and women, we, in our noble times, have lately read that "there has not been one execution in London during the present shrievalty." With what joy, with what grateful remembrance has this been read by the many friends Such were Bacon's public exertions.-In pri- ) vate life he was always cheerful and often playful, according to his own favourite maxim, "To be free-minded and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat, and of sleep, and of exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting." The art of conversation, that social mode of diffusing kindness and knowledge, he considered to be one of the valuable arts of life, and all that he taught he skilfully and gracefully practised. When he spoke, the hearers only feared that he should be silent, yet he was more pleased to listen than to speak, "glad to light his torch at any man's candle." He was skilful in alluring his company to discourse upon subjects in which they were most conversant. He was ever happy to commend, and unwilling to censure and when he could not assent to an opinion, he would set forth its ingenuity, and so grace and adorn it by his own luminous statement, that his opponent could not feel lowered by his defeat. His wit was brilliant, and when it flashed upon any subject, it was never with ill-nature, which, like the crackling of thorns, ending in sudden darkness, is only fit for a fool's laughter; the sparkling of his wit was that of the precious diamond, valuable for its worth and weight, denoting the riches of the mine. He had not any children; but, says Dr. Rawley, "the want of children did not detract from his good usage of his consort during the intermarriage, whom he prosecuted with much conjugal love and respect, with many rich gifts and endowments, besides a robe of honour which he invested her withal, which she wore until her dying day, being twenty years and more after his death." He was religious, and died in the faith estatablished in the church of England. Bacon has been accused of servility, of dissimulation, of various base motives, and their filthy brood of base actions, all unworthy of his high birth, and incompatible with his great wisdom, and the estimation in which he was held by the noblest spirits of the age. It is true that there were men in his own time, and will be men in all times, who are better pleased to count spots in the sun than to rejoice in its glorious brightness. Such men have openly libelled him, like Dewes and Weldon, whose falsehoods were detected as soon as uttered, or have fastened upon certain ceremonious compliments and dedications, the fashion of his day, as a sample of his servility, passing over his noble letters to the queen, his lofty contempt for the Lord Keeper Puckering, his open dealing with Sir Robert Cecil, and with |