Round he surveyed-and well might, where he stood

So high above the circling canopy

Of night's extended shade - from eastern point

Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears
Andromeda far off Atlantic seas

Beyond the horizon.

What he was as a writer, he was as an orator.

nessed his eloquence:

Ben Jonson wit

There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered, No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.'

Like Shakespeare and the rest, he grasped objects, not fractionally, but organized and complete. Like them, he speaks in the style of an oracle. He will not dispute, though he moves against a vast mass of prejudices. He condenses the details into a maxim, and hands us the result, with the words, 'Francis of Verulam thought thus.'

He has the strong common sense which marks the English mind. He will not catch at clouds. He must stand on a fact,a palpable and resisting fact. His motto is, experiment, again and again experiment. The end of knowledge is empire over matter. Plato and Seneca would extinguish cupidity; Bacon would secure property. They would teach us to endure pain; he would assuage it. They would form the mind to a high degree of wisdom and virtue; he would minister to the comforts of the body, without neglecting moral and religious instruction. He lacks the upright bias,-insight into transcendental truths.

He was a thinker living amid the turmoil of a fresh and stirring life, yet with the genius of counsel rather than of action. Scorning the least prudential care of his fortune, he was often in pecuniary distress. On one occasion he was arrested in the street for a debt, and lodged in a spunging-house. His heart, he declared, was not set on exterior things. His purpose was noble. 'I am not hunting for fame. I have no desire to found a sect.' Enough for me,-the consciousness of well-deserving, and those real and effectual results with which fortune itself cannot interfere.'

But mortal greatness is not without mortal infirmity. He who

net.

was to teach us how to philosophize, was himself fascinated by magical sympathies, surmised why witches eat human flesh; asserted: 'It is constantly received and avouched, that the anointing of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound itself;' presented Prince Henry, as 'the first-fruits of his philosophy, a sympathizing stone, made of several mixtures, to know the heart of man,' whose 'operative gravity, magnetic and magicai, would show, by the hand which held it, whether the heart was warm and affectionate.' He dictated the laws and economy of Nature, and was himself enamored of state and magnificence. He took a feminine delight in the brilliancy of his robes, loved to be gazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at in the cabiHe championed the cause of intellectual freedom, and was himself a servile intriguer for place. A devoted worshipper of truth, he had the double temper of a lawyer and a politician,— duplicity. As utility was his watchword, he assiduously courted the favor of all who were likely to be of use to him; and might prop the fortunes of a friend,- till he was in danger of shaking his own. Loved, trusted, and befriended by Essex, he bore a principal part in sending that nobleman to the scaffold. In his judicial capacity, pledged to discharge his functions impartially, he accepted bribes from plaintiff and defendant. His illicit gains. were stated at a hundred thousand pounds. After he had tried in vain to avert the sudden and terrible reverse, he wrote to the Peers: Upon advised consideration of the charges, descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence.' 'My lords,' said he to the deputies who came to inquire whether the confession was really subscribed by himself, it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.'

He had none of the fire of sentiment or passion,-none of the kindling impulses which give intensity to character. To impulse he was serenely, coldly superior. Let us hope that his wife was equally unimpassioned,-a pure intelligence, craving no love, for it is doubtful if she received any. He desired to marry Lady Hatton, not for her disposition, which was that of an eccentric termagant, but for her money. Though indifferent or selfish in

personal relations, he had the mellow spirit of humanity, without which, he tells us, 'men are but a better kind of vermin.' His benevolence embraced all races and all ages. This philanthropy which distinguishes between individuals and mankind, and which we believe, after all, to have formed the essential feeling of his soul, is expressed in the description of one of the fathers of Solomon's House: 'His countenance was as the countenance of one who pitties men.'

of

As he preserved a calm neutrality, though living in an age controversy, his creed, if he held any, may not be told. Theology is relegated to the province of faith. 'If I proceed to treat of it,' he said, 'I shall step out of the bark into the ship of the Church. Neither will the stars of philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly shone on us, any longer give us their light.' But speculation is profitless, and scepticism is powerless, before these vital, grand, imperial words:

'I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.'

He cultivated letters to the last moment of his life. We could fancy him awaiting the signal for his departure, without boldness. and without fear, with that sublime reliance on the future which makes the hour of evening tranquil. He contemplated the end with the composure that becomes the scholar:

'I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils. All that which is past is as a dream; and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking. So much of our life as we have discovered is already dead; and all those hours which we share, even from the breasts of our mothers, until we return to our grandmother the earth, are part of our dying days, whereof even this is one, and those that succeed are of the same nature, for we die daily; and, as others have given place to us, so we must, in the end, give way to others.'

Then, as if sensibly passing to the last rest:

Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch, and compound with this fleshly weakness for a time of perpetual rest; and I shall presently be as happy for a few hours, as I had died the first hour I was born."

Not without emotion do we read:

First, 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. For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albans: there was my mother buried. . . . For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.'

Influence. He confirmed and accelerated the new movement by a thorough and large apprehension of its bent and value.

At home, his authority, within forty years, was the subject of complaint. Abroad, treatises were written on his method, and academies were formed which expressly recognised him as their master. In France it was said: 'However numerous and important be the discoveries reserved for posterity, it will always be just to say of him, that he laid the foundation of their success, so that the glory of this great man, so far from diminishing with the progress of time, is destined to receive perpetual increase.'

He had taken all knowledge for his province, and all realms were to be affected:

One may doubt, not to say object, whether it is natural philosophy alone that we speak of perfecting by our method, or other sciences as well-logic, ethics, politics. But we certainly intend what has been said as applicable to all; and as the common logic which governs by syllogisms pertains not only to natural but to all sciences, so also our own, which proceeds by induction, embraces all.'

Hence his influence, though indirect, due to the practical or positive spirit of his method, has perhaps been more powerful on mental and moral than on physical science; for the dominant principle of modern psychology is, that experience, exterior and interior, is the only origin of knowledge. The philosophy of Locke,' says Degerando, ought to have been called the philosophy of Bacon.' Not without justice, may he be looked upon as the inspiration of that empirical school which numbers among its adherents such names as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hartley, Mill, Condillac, and others of less note.

We have elsewhere indicated some of the 'fruits' of the new philosophy. We have also explained that in illuminating the physical field, it has darkened the intellectual and moral. It has furnished a lamp to guide our feet through the outer world, but none to light our way to the inward. It has fastened upon ethics an earthy utilitarian temper, taking no account of the motives that drop from the skies.

We have remarked, too, those profound reflections which, besides forming a treasure of ethical and political wisdom, have stimulated the thought and suggested the inquiries of after times. If to-day a scientist wishes to express compactly his scorn of dogmatism, of custom, it is to the Organum that he goes for an aphorism. Volumes have been written in the expansion of its statements. The ideas of the Essays have become

domesticated, and have been continually reproduced, to enrich and enlarge the individual and collective mind.

Finally, mournfully, my lord, you whose glorious day-dream is hourly accomplishing around us, whose inductive spell has proved more puissant than the incantations of Merlin,-you have left to all the children of men, from your own checkered life of magnificence and of shame, this retributive, warning induction, albeit not contemplated in your scheme: When man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss.

MILTON.

Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn;
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;
The next in majesty, in both the last:

The force of nature could no further go,

To make a third, she joined the other two.-Dryden.

Biography.-Born in London, in 1608, son of a Puritan scrivener; inherited from his father literary tastes and a love of music, from his mother a gentle nature and weak eyes; was instructed first by private tuition, sent to school at twelve, and at sixteen entered Cambridge; took the usual degrees, and returned home, to spend five soft flowing years among the woods of Horton; read the classics and wrote; travelled on the Continent; formed the acquaintance of Grotius at Paris, and of Galileo at Florence; fed his imagination on Italian scenery, art, and letters; received some distinction, and was excluded from others by his liberal utterances on religion; was about to start for Sicily and Greece, but, hearing of the pending rupture between the king and parliament, hastened back to England, too conscientious to pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were contending for their rights; while waiting for a call to service, conducted a private school; taught many years and at various times; threw himself into the raging sea of controversy, against the Royalists and the Established Church; at thirty-five, within a month after meeting her, married Mary Powel, who, four weeks