such things in my presence, as if they really believed them. And well they might; for I found they had just the same assurance for these realities as I had for the fact of my existence. Our common Father-their God and mine-had proved them by evidence 'more sure,' than that of sight, touch or hearing, though they were novelties to me. Our mission did not reach so far, though as we waved to and fro in the moist winds of autumn, or fell 'dry and withered to the ground,' we called' to those mortals who were near us-'Once I was green, and bright and beautiful, but now I am faded and dead. You, too, must fade! You, too, must die!' I knew no more than this. How should I? All the religion I possessed, was picked up in the dame-school of Nature, and had no reference to a better life. But my wonder was, judging from all I had before seen and heard, that man should be so insensible to his own privileges, as to come sometimes for knowledge to 'the oaks and rills'— and to sentimentalize, as if he had no better teacher, and with so much gravity, on such a meagre subject as the poor, dead, dry anatomy of an “ Acacia Leaf.”

MARY ISABELLA.

PRECEPTIVE BIOGRAPHY.

LORD BACON.

FEW errors, perhaps, are more common than that which supposes public life to be real life. Until quite recently, the history of the world was supposed to be shut up in that of its kings or rulers. The staple of our accounts of England, for example, was made up of the personal merits or demerits of its sovereigns and the public acts of its statesmen, with a very slight inter-sprinkling of the mental and moral doings of those master-minds which really set up and pull down kingdoms, turning the world upside down by a Thought that has grown up silently, or permeating and transforming the whole aspect of society by Ideas and Principles, which were considered Utopian in their birth, but have gradually covered the wide earth, with their refreshing shadow.

But we are gradually getting rid of the absurd opinions that empires are acquired, retained, enlarged, or consolidated

C

by the outward acts of kings or conquerors. The only kingdom that shall never be destroyed or left to other people, is independent of all such means. Its spring of greatness and power are "within." It is a creation of the mind-not an acquisition of the hand. Truth and Right are its stabilitywrong and oppression its certain downfall. Many a ruler has been grossly deceived in his estimate of conquest, and has been rapidly undoing the very work he thought he was accomplishing by enlarging his territories or strengthening his alliances. The world's applause is reserved for all that is really worthless in his character; and none but the philosophical student of history is aware whether the country over which he rules is advancing or retrograding. Of all lies, outward aggrandizement is oftentimes the greatest.

The true greatness of a man is seldom to be estimated by his political ability or public standing. He may be clever, farsighted, indomitably persevering and successful in his management of affairs; but after all, it is the inner man that moulds and shapes the state. It is what he does in the closet, rather than in the cabinet, that moves the kingdom forward or backward.

We never felt the force of these truths more convincingly, than we did on reading a life of Bacon, the subject of our present sketch. What an ugly shadow was his public life! What a great reality his mental history!

FRANCIS BACON, "the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind” was the second son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper of the seals under Queen Elizabeth, by his second wife, and was born in London on the 22nd January, 1561.

It is recorded of him that when very young, the queen took a particular delight in trying him with questions; and received so much satisfaction from the good sense and manliness of his answers, that she was wont to call him, in mirth, her "young lord keeper." One saying of his deserves to be remembered. The queen having asked him his age, while he was yet a boy, he answered readily, "that he was just two years younger than her majesty's happy reign."

Of his education we know no particulars, till he was sent to study in the university of Cambridge, under Dr. Whitgift,

afterwards archbishop of Canterbury; and we find he was entered of Trinity College in his twelfth year. The progress he made was rapid and uncommon; for he had run through the whole circle of the liberal arts, as they were then taught, before he was sixteen. But what is far more surprising, he began, even then, to see through the emptiness and futility of the philosophy in vogue; and to conjecture that useful knowledge must be raised on other foundations, and built up with other materials, than had been employed through so many preceding centuries.

This was a hopeful sign. Little minds are content to take up thinkings of others—a great genius studies only how he can recast or improve them. The one folds them up and conceals them carefully in his old prejudices, laying them by for contingencies, the other gets out of them the largest possible amount of interest. They constitute his mental capital, and the more frequently he can turn them, the better. He depends less upon these old thoughts themselves, than on the new temper and spirit he puts into them. He draws in knowledge only that he may glorify and enhance it by infusing it in the sunshine of his own intellect, and whilst fully alive to the value of all extraneous appliances, never forgets the noble machinery within that can bring forth sweetness from the strong and meat from the eater.

At the early age of sixteen, Bacon was sent to travel on the continent, and it is not a little creditable to his sound discretion whilst yet a youth, that he should have been entrusted by the French ambassador with a message to the queen of England, which required secresy and dispatch. During his stay abroad, though not inattentive to the study of languages, he turned his attention much more to things than words, intelligently observing and recording accurately all that he could learn of the manners, customs, government, and institutions of the various states through which he passed.

His father, a man of learning, high integrity and moderation, died about this time, leaving young Bacon but indifferently provided for, considering the position he was expected to occupy. Necessitated thus to seek employment, he had recourse to the study of common law. For this purpose, he placed himself

in the society of Gray's Inn, where his superior talents rendered him the ornament of the house; as the gentleness and affability of his deportment won him the affection of all its members. In his profession, he quickly rose to so much eminence and reputation, that, at the age of twenty-eight years, he was named by Elizabeth her learned counsel extraordinary; a distinction which he needed no assistance from his father's merit with her to deserve."

This then was the business to which his attention seemed to be directed, but his ambition, rather than his heart, was in it. Two objects were before him—to live and learn. In following out the first, his motives and his practice were of the lowest and most unworthy cast; his political and public life having been disgraced by meanness amounting almost to dishonesty, and stained by the most barefaced hypocrisy and ingratitude. Yet his private studies were from the first, devoted to the noblest objects.

In his intervals of leisure he often gave full scope to his conceptions; surveying the whole state of learning, observing its defects, and imagining the proper methods to supply them. This he first attempted in a treatise, entitled 'The greatest Birth of Time;' which appears to have been the first outline of that amazing design, which he afterwards filled up and finished in his grand instauration of the sciences.

The Lord Treasurer, Burleigh, having married an aunt of Bacon's, he was frequent in his applications to that minister for some place of credit and service in the state. Burleigh succeeded in procuring him the reversion of a situation worth about sixteen hundred pounds a year, but he had to wait nearly twenty years before reaping any advantage from this preferment. During this interval, probably not without some better reasons than mere jealousy, a bitter rivalry sprang up between these great men, and Bacon was represented to the queen as "a man of mere speculation-as one wholly given up to philosophical enquiries, new indeed and amazing, but fanciful and unsolid." Perhaps this conduct on the part of Burleigh led Bacon to rely upon the good offices of his rival, the Earl of Essex, who espoused his cause so warmly, that, finding himself, unable otherwise to serve him, he bestowed upon him out of

his own private fortune, Twickenham Park, and "its garden of Paradise."

Yet against this very man, Bacon was mean enough to appear as counsel on his attainder, and after his death, as a means of warding off the public furor, wrote a work in vindication of that proceeding. The masses took up the matter, and the work brought its own reward. "Never man incurred more universal or more lasting censure than Bacon by this writing. He was everywhere traduced as one who endeavoured to murder the good name of his benefactor, after the ministry had destroyed his person. His life was even threatened, and he went in

daily hazard of assassination."

Elizabeth died, and James the First came to the throne. Had Bacon himself been a Scotsman he could not have followed the game of preferment more hotly. The king knighted him, and this, for a short time, kept him quiet.

Far more worthy of notice is the next fact in the history of Sir Francis Bacon, Knight. In 1605 he published 'The Progress and Advancement of Learning.' The great aim of this treatise, no less original in the design than happy in the execution, was to survey accurately the whole state and extent of the intellectual world; what parts of it had been unsuccessfully cultivated; what lay still neglected, or unknown; and by what methods these might be discovered and those improved, to the further advantage of society and human nature. By exposing the errors and imperfections of our knowledge, he led mankind into the only right way of reforming the one and supplying the other;-he taught them to know their wants. He went farther, and himself pointed out to them general methods of correction and improvement in the whole circle of arts and sciences. This work he first published in English: but to render it of more extensive use, he recommended a translation of it into Latin to Dr. Playfer, of Cambridge. Playfer, with the scrupulous accuracy of a grammarian, was more attentive to fashion his style to purity and roundness of periods, made out of the phraseology he had gleaned from classic writers, than to render his author's meaning in plain and masculine language. After the sight of a specimen or two, Sir Francis did not encourage him to proceed in it.