It was not likely that he would do so. Bacon was a man of things; the learned world in his day, were all for words. Sound inductive philosophy is a very young thing. Little more than two centuries have gone by, since the world of books, and the world of nature were regarded as entirely separate and distinct, and their teachings were never intermingled. Bacon's object was to open out a new field of enquiry and make men acquainted with the living problems of the outward universe: the philologist had no higher motive than to make print and paper musical. And yet in matters of pure scholarship, the philosopher was as earnest as the grammarian, for after his retirement, Bacon actually turned the whole of his work into Latin.

As the enmity of Cecil, lord Burleigh, died out, Bacon had to encounter the serious opposition of Sir Edward Coke. But he was, notwithstanding, promoted in 1607 to the post of SolicitorGeneral, chiefly through his own importunate solicitations. No sooner was he secure in the good graces of his sovereign, than he stooped to the servility of arguing in the House of Commons in favor of the unfair and unpopular measures of his master, with reference to his unreasonable partiality for Scotland. But it would not do: his sophistries were exposed and ridiculed, and his speeches and writings served no other purpose than to exemplify the sordid and saleable character of public men.

His next work, published in 1610, was entitled, "Of the Wisdom of the Ancients." It supposes, as was believed for two centuries afterwards, that there is a vast deal of physical, moral, and political meaning veiled under their myths and fables; but our modern missionaries have now undeceived us, and clearly shewn that the first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans gives a much more sound and searching view of the philosophy of heathenism than all the labors of a Bacon, a Bryant, a Jones, or a Maurice.

In 1613, Bacon succeeded to the post of Attorney-General, then worth about six thousand a year, in addition to which the reversion before spoken of had now fallen to him. But with all his meanness he was so reckless and extravagant, that he found his vast income barely sufficient.

On the rise of Villiers into kingly favor, Bacon did not lose his opportunity. He tendered his advice, which was favorably accepted, though the gentle hint that he would "do well to advance able and virtuous men, in all kinds, degrees, and professions," was not perhaps acted upon in the way intended by its suggestor.

Bacon, in his public character had now degenerated into a pitiful hireling. On the disgrace of Somerset, though the king knew him to be a murderer, he acted with criminal dissimulation towards him, and found in Bacon a ready tool and crafty advocate. But the whole affair is of so black a character, that we gladly pass it by. Nor does our author rise at all in our estimation by the next passage in his busy life. His ery was still, "Give! Give!" Anxious to secure the office of lord chancellor, about to fall vacant, Bacon took care not only to use his influence with Buckingham, but gratuitously to asperse the character of his rival, Sir Edward Coke. His artifices were successful, and on the 7th March, 1617, he received the seals. Nor did the littleness of Bacon's public life end here. Sir Edward Coke had been disgraced for his honesty with the king. Anxious to recover his standing with the court, he contrived preliminaries for a marriage between his daughter and Sir John Villiers, brother to Buckingham. Bacon was alarmed lest this negociation should lead to Coke's reinstatement, and actually wrote most disingenuously both to Buckingham and the king, forboding all manner of evil, if the match were brought about. Luckily, the lord chancellor overshot his mark and displeased Buckingham, who was not reconciled for some time. In the beginning of 1619, Sir Francis Bacon was created lord high chancellor of England, and shortly after, baron of Verulam; which title he exchanged, the year following, for that of Viscount St. Alban.

We now turn to a more refreshing subject. Neither the weight and variety of business, nor the pomps of a court could divert his attention from the study of philosophy. Those were his avocations and incumbrances: this was his beloved employment, and almost the only pleasure in which he indulged in his freer and better hours. He gave to the public, in 1620, his "Novum Organum," as a second part to his grand Instauration

of the Sciences; a work that for twelve years together he had been methodising, altering, and polishing; till he had laboured the whole into a series of aphorisms, as it now appears.

In this work, he proposed turning our attention from notions to things; from those subtle and frivolous speculations that dazzle, not enlighten, the understanding, to a sober and sensible investigation of the laws and powers of nature, in a way becoming sages who make truth and information the sole aim of their inquiries. In order to this, the first endeavour was to weed out of the mind such errors as naturally grow in it or have been planted there by education and cherished by the influence of men, whose writings had long claimed a right of prescription to rule and mislead mankind. To a mind thus prepared for instruction, he proposes the second and scientific part of his scheme, the true method of interpreting nature, by fact and observation; by sound and genuine induction, widely differing from that puerile art which till then had solely prevailed in philosophy.

The hour of retribution was now at hand. As Bacon had so frequently sold himself to a corrupt court, that court to screen itself, made little scruple of sacrificing him. The details it is needless to give. He was tried before the House of Lords, and sentenced "to undergo a fine of forty thousand pounds;—to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure;-to be for ever incapable of any office, place, or employment in the commonwealth, and never to sit again in parliament, or come within the verge of the court."

The sentence was not fully carried out; his imprisonment was short; the fine was waived, and he again sat in Parliament. He outlived his disgrace about five years, and died on the 9th April, 1626. The cause of his death is, perhaps, not generally known. He was taking an airing in his coach, near the spot at which Hagbush-lane came out into the Hollowayroad to Highgate. The snow then lying on the ground, it occurred to him that flesh might be preserved in it: and purchasing a hen at the foot of Highgate-hill, his lordship helped to stuff the body with snow, which so chilled him, that he fell ill, and died shortly after at the Earl of Arundel's house at Highgate.

His greater life

Such was the lesser life of Lord Bacon. remains to be written. His state-tricks and chicanery may, we hope, be soon forgotten; but his writings are still quick and powerful. Before his day men invented "facts." Bacon ransacked for them the world of Nature, and tried them in the crucible ofArt. Until his time the ground had lain fallow. "I have heard his lordship," says one who was much with him, “speake complainingly that his lordship should be forced to be a workman, and a laborer, and to digge the clay and burne the brick; and more than that, to gather the straw and stubble over all the fields to burne the brick withal. But he knoweth that except he doe it, nothing will be done." And a noble work it was, thus to break up the fallows! Would that we had more of this school!—we could find room for them even in the present day.

Not one of our young readers may ever rise to the post of lord chancellor. But many may rise higher. Bacon's littleness lay in his seals of office-his true majesty in the vigorous culture and discipline of the mind. But those who are anxious to use rightly and fully the awful powers entrusted to them, and to attain his excellencies without his errors, should lay open the whole soul to the influence of Divine teaching, and seek first the pure, peaceable, loving, and disinterested wisdom which cometh from above.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

WE are delighted to meet our venerable and venerated friend, the Rev. J. A. James, once more in print. "The Young Man's Friend "* possesses all the manly vigor of his former writings; and his rich and matured experience stamps it with a high practical value. To be useful has always been the single aim of Mr. James. With respect to the present work, he says, "Speculation and controversy are with one exception both excluded: and even doctrinal matter is but sparingly introduced. Not that these things are unimportant or unnecessary in proper place, but they do not come within the com

The Young Man's Friend and Guide through Life to Immortality, by John Angell James. London, Hamilton, 1851.

prehension of my design. I am a practical man, and am most at home on practical subjects: and at the same time that I believe holiness is founded upon truth, and that Christian duties are drawn from Christian doctrines, and are to be enforced by them, I am still of opinion that what is practical will be more for your edification than what is theoretical or controversial."

As a characteristic illustration of our author's style, we select a striking and pungent description of the design and scope of the Book of Proverbs, recommended in his seventh sermon to the special study of youth. We might with much advantage have extracted more largely, but prefer recommending our readers to the work itself :

How lofty a place among the objects of human pursuit has been assigned to WISDOM. What a stir in the world of mind has that word made through all ages, from the history of Egypt to that of Greece. All the most gifted intellects of antiquity have started in quest of this most precious acquisition. Every country has been visited-every oracle consulted-every source of information explored, to find out wisdom. Yet all have been searched in vain, as long as the inquiry was conducted by unaided reason. When Pythagoras was complimented by the tyrant of Syracuse as the wise man, he modestly refused the flattery, declaring that he was not the possessor of wisdom, but only its lover seeking after it—a philosopher. You may see this subject finely illustrated in the book of Job, where in that wonderfully sublime portion of Scripture, and in one of the sublimest of its chapters, the twenty-eighth, we find the question proposed for the solution of the universe, 'Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding? And when man through ignorance is silent-and the depth says, It is not in me and death and destruction reply that they have only heard the fame thereof then cometh forth God from his pavilion of darkness as the divine teacher of wisdom: and what is it that, after all the researches and opinions and conflicting systems of philosophers, He proclaims to be true wisdom? Not some profound secret of nature which had baffled the inquiries of philosophers. Not some great principle of political science which was to regulate