sence. Nearly half of the immense folio is devoted to sacred history; and though the remaining portions, devoted to the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans, are commonly considered the most readable, inasmuch as they exhibit Raleigh, the statesman and warrior, sociably treating of statesmen and warriors, Raleigh, who had lived history, penetrating into the life of historical events, we must confess to having been more attracted by the earlier portions, which show us Raleigh the scholar, philosopher, and divine, in his attempts to probe the deepest secrets of existence, his brain crowded with all the foolish and all the wise sayings of Pagan philosophers and Christian fathers and schoolmen, and throwing his own judgments, with a quaint simplicity and a quaint audacity, into the general mass of theological and philosophical guessing he has accumulated. The style of the history is excellent, - clear, sweet, flexible, straightforward and business-like, discussing the question of the locality of Paradise as Raleigh would have discussed the question of an expedition against Spain at the council-table of Elizabeth. There is an apocryphal story that he completed another volume of the History of the World, but, on learning that his publisher had lost money by the first, burnt the manuscript, not willing that so good a man should suffer any further harm through him. But the story must be false; for

such tenderness to a publisher is equally against human nature and author-nature.

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The defect of Raleigh's character, even when his ends were patriotic and noble, was unscrupulousness, a flashing impatience with all moral obstacles obtruded in the path of his designs. He had a too confident belief in the resources of his wit and courage, in the infallibility of his insight, foresight, and power of combination, in the unflagging vigor by which he had so often. made his will march abreast of his swiftest thought; and in carrying out his projects he sometimes risked his conscience with almost the same joyous recklessness with which he risked his life. The noblest passage in his History of the World, that in which he condenses in the bold and striking image of a majestic tree the power of Rome, has some application to his own splenIdid rise and terrible fall. "We have left Rome," he says, "flourishing in the middle of the field, having rooted up or cut down all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But, after some continuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut her down."

BACON.

I.

EXT to Shakespeare, the greatest name of the

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Elizabethan age is that of Bacon. His life has been written by his chaplain, Dr. Rawley, by Basil Montagu, by Lord Campbell, and by Macaulay; yet none of these biographies reconciles the external facts of the man's life with the internal facts of the man's nature.

Macaulay's vivid sketch of Bacon's career is the most acute, the most merciless, and for popular effect the most efficient, of all; but it deals simply with external events, evinces in their interpretation no deep and detecting glance into character, and urges the evidence for the baseness of Bacon with the acrimonious zeal of a prosecuting attorney, eager for a verdict, rather than weighs it with the candor of a judge deciding on the nature of a great benefactor of the race, who in his will had solemnly left his memory to "men's charitable speeches." When he comes to treat of Bacon as a philosopher, he passes to the opposite extreme of panegyric. The impression left by the whole representation is not

the impression of a man, but of a monstrous huddling together of two men, - one infamous, the other glorious,

which he calls by the name of Bacon.

The question therefore arises, Is it possible to harmonize, in one individuality, Bacon the courtier, Bacon the lawyer, Bacon the statesman, Bacon the judge, with Bacon the thinker, philosopher, and philanthropist ? The antithesis commonly instituted between these is rather a play of epigram than an exercise of characterization. The "meanest of mankind" could not have written The Advancement of Learning; yet everybody feels that some connection there must be between the meditative life which produced The Advancement of Learning, and the practical life devoted to the advancement of Bacon. Who, then, was the man who is so execrated for selling justice, and so exalted for writing the Novum Organum?

This question can never be intelligently answered, unless we establish some points of connection between the spirit which animates his works and the external events which constituted what is called his life. As a general principle, it is well for us to obtain some conception of a great man from his writings, before we give much heed to the recorded incidents of his career; for these incidents, as historically narrated, are likely to be false, are sure to be one-sided, and almost always need

to be interpreted in order to convey real knowledge to the mind. It is ever for the interest or the malice of some contemporary, that every famous politician, who by necessity passes into history, should pass into it. stained in character; and it is fortunate that, in the case of Bacon, we are not confined to the outside records of his career, but possess means of information which conduct us into the heart of his nature. Indeed, Bacon the man is most clearly seen and intimately known in Bacon the thinker. Bacon thinking, Bacon observing, Bacon inventing, these were as much acts of Bacon as Bacon intriguing for power and place. "I account," he has said, "my ordinary course of study and meditation more painful than most parts of action are." But his works do not merely contain his thoughts and observations; they are all informed with the inmost life of his mind and the real quality of his nature; and, if he was base, servile, treacherous, and venal, it will not require any great expenditure of sagacity to detect the taint of servility, baseness, treachery, and venality in his writings. For what was Bacon's intellect but Bacon's nature in its intellectual expression? Everybody remembers the noble commencement of the Novum Or

ganum: "Francis of Verulam thought thus.” Ay! it is not merely the understanding of Francis of Verulam, but Francis himself that thinks; and we may be sure