imaged to the honest English imagination as a man with his head high up in the heaven of contemplation, seemingly absorbed in sublime meditations, while his hand is held stealthily out to receive a bribe! On the degree of his moral guilt it is difficult at this time to decide. The probability seems to be that, in accordance with a general custom, he and his dependents received presents from the suitors in his court. The presents were given to influence his decision of cases. He at once profuse and poor took presents from both parties, and then decided according to the law. He was exposed by those who, having given money, were exasperated at receiving "killing decrees" in return,— who found that Bacon did not sell injustice, but justice. He was sentenced to pay a fine of £ 40,000; to be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure; to be forever incapable of holding any public office, place, or employment; and forbidden to sit in Parliament or come within the verge of the Court. Bacon seems himself to have considered that a notorious abuse, in which other chancellors had participated, was reformed in his punishment. He is reported to have said, afterwards, in conversation, "I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure in Parliament that was these two hundred years." The courts of Russia are now

notoriously corrupt; in some future time, when the nation imperatively demands a reformation of the judicial tribunals, some great Russian, famous as a thinker and man of letters as well as judge, will, though comparatively innocent, be selected as a victim, and the whole system be rendered infamous in his condemnation.

Bacon lived five years after his disgrace; and, during these years, though plagued by creditors and vexed by domestic disquiet, he prosecuted his literary and scientific labors with singular vigor and success. In revising old works, in producing new, and in projecting even greater ones than he produced, he displayed an energy and opulence of mind wonderful even in him. He died on the 9th of April, 1626, in consequence of a cold caught in trying an experiment to ascertain if flesh might not be preserved in snow as well as salt; and his consolation in his last hours was, that the " experiment succeeded excellently well." There are two testimonials to him, after he was hurled from power and place, which convey a vivid idea of the benignant stateliness of his personal presence, of the impression he made on those contemporaries who were at once his intimates and subordinates, and who, in the most familiar intercourse, felt and honored the easy dignity with which his greatness was worn. "My conceit of his person," says Ben Jonson," was never increased towards

him by his place or honors; but I have and do reverence him for the greatness that was only proper to himself; in that he seemed to me ever, by his work, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength; for greatness he could not want." And Dr. Rawley, his domestic chaplain, who saw him as he appeared in the most familiar relations of his home, remarks, with quaint veneration, "I have been induced to think that, if ever there were a beam of knowledge derived from God upon any man in these modern times, it was upon him."

BACON.

II.

WE propose in this chapter to give some account of

Bacon's writings; and the first place in such an

account belongs to his philosophical works relating to the interpretation of nature.

As Bacon, from his boyhood, was a thinker living in the thick of affairs, with a discursive reason held in check by the pressure of palpable facts, he equally escaped the narrowness of the secluded student and the narrowness of the practical man of the world. It was therefore but natural that, early in his collegiate life, he should feel a contempt for the objects and the methods of the philosophy current among the scholars of his time. The true object of philosophy must be either to increase our knowledge or add to our power. The ancient and scholastic systems seemed to him to have failed in both. They had not discovered truths, they had not invented arts. Admitting that the highest use of knowledge was the pure joy it afforded the intellect, and that its lowest use was its ministration to the practical wants of man, it seemed to him evident that their

method led as little to knowledge that enriched the mind as to knowledge that gave cunning to the hands. Aiming at self-culture by self-inspection, rather than by inspection of nature, they had neglected, he thought, the great world of God for the little world of man; so that at last it seemed as if the peculiar distinction of knowledge consisted in knowing that nothing could be known. But the question might arise, Was not the barrenness of their results due to the selfish littleness, rather than the disinterested elevation, of their aim? Introduce into philosophy a philanthropic motive, make man the thinker aid man the laborer, unite contemplation with a practical purpose, and discard the idea that knowledge was intended for the exclusive gratification of a few selected spirits, and philosophy would then increase in largeness and elevation as much as it would increase in usefulness; for if such a revolution in its spirit, object, and method could be made, it would continually furnish new truths for the intellect to contemplate, from the impetus given to the discovery of new truths by the perception that they could be applied to relieve human necessities. If it were objected that philosophy could not stoop from her ethical and spiritual heights to the drudgery of investigating natural laws, it might be answered, that what God had condescended to create it surely was not ignoble in man to examine; "for that which is deserving