which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. XCII OF STUDIES FRANCIS BACON FRANCIS BACON was born in London in 1561. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper under Elizabeth. Francis was ambitious ; and he rose finally to the dignity of the Chancellorship, an office which he held for three years. In March, 1626, he caught cold while making an experiment to arrest decay, and died at Lord Arundel's house near Highgate. Ben Jonson says of him, somewhat too generously, "No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss." Of his "Essays," some widely known and quoted are "Studies," "Gardens," and "Great Places." His works, "The Advancement of Learning" and "Novum Organum," are too difficult for your present consideration. FRANCIS BACON. Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshaling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are, like common dis-tilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man; and, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. "Studies become habits "; nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. So, if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find difference, let him study the schoolmen. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyer's cases: so every defect of the mind may have a special receipt. At last divine Cecilia came, The sweet enthusiast from her sacred store Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize Or both divide the crown; He raised a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down! present ready. DRYDEN. Timotheus: a celebrated musician of Athens. He lived in the fourth century before Christ. XCIII IMMORTALITY ORESTES A. BROWNSON ORESTES A. BROWNSON (18031876) was born in Vermont. In 1844 he entered the Catholic Church, after having been a member of several sects. In 1838 he founded the "Boston Quarterly," which was afterward merged into the "Democratic Review." In 1844 he began the magazine with which his name was identified for Brownson's so many years Quarterly Review." The Review was the first American periodical to be republished in England. Besides the Review, Brownson wrote a few volumes on political and religious matters, among them "The American Republic " and "Liberalism and the Church." He was one of the most philosophical minds this country has produced. ORESTES A. BROWNSON I lingered several weeks around the grave of my mother, and in the neighborhood where she had lived. It was the place where I had passed my own childhood and youth. It was the scene of those early associations which become the dearer to us as we leave them the farther behind. I stood where I had sported in the freedom of early childhood; but I stood alone, for no one was there with whom I could speak of its frolics. One feels singularly desolate when he sees only strange faces and hears only strange voices in what was the home of his early life. I returned to the village where I had resided for many years; but what was that spot to me now? Nature had done much for it, but Nature herself is very much what we make her. There must be beauty in our souls, or we shall see no loveliness in her face; and beauty had died out of my soul. She who might have recalled it to life and thrown its hues over all the world was-but of that I will not speak. It was now that I really needed the hope of immortality. The world was to me one vast desert, and life was without end or aim. The hope of immortality! We want it when earth has lost its gloss of novelty; when our hopes have been blasted, our affections withered, and the shortness of life and the vanity of all human pursuits have come home to us and made us exclaim, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!" We want then the hope of immortality to give to life an end, an aim. We all of us at times feel this want. The infidel feels it in early life. He learns all too soon, what to him is a withering fact, that man does not complete his destiny on earth. Man never completes anything here. What, then, shall he do if there be no hereafter? With what courage can I betake myself to my task? I may begin; but the grave lies between me and the completion. Death will come to interrupt my work and compel me to leave it unfinished. This is more terrible to me than the thought of ceasing to be. I could almost (at least I think I could) |