Ilis paternal goodness to me; that, above all, in regard of this calamity, I acquiesce in His Divine Will-for He it is who comforts and upholds my spirit: being ever more mindful of what He shall bestow upon me, than what He shall deny me.

Neither am I concerned, though this you think a miserable thing, at being classed with the blind, with the weak, with the afflicted, with the sorrowful; since there is a hope that on this account I may have a nearer claim to the protection of the sovereign Father. There is a way, and the great Apostle is my authority, through weakness to the greatest strength. May I be one of the weakest, provided only in my weakness immortal and better vigour be put forth with greater effect; provided only in my darkness the light of the Divine Countenance doth but the more brightly shine; for then I shall at once be the weakest, and the most mighty-the most blind, and of the most piercing sight. Thus, through this infirmity, I shall be perfected, consummated; thus through this darkness I should be enrobed in light.

Having indulged myself in citing these passages from the writings of perhaps the two most remarkable Englishmen that ever lived, (Shakespear only excepted,) I feel I have hardly presented Bacon in his highest aspect; for in truth that he had the spirit of reverence and of earnest piety, and that he wished these to govern all his inquiries, is most certain. His solemn prayers to Almighty God, composed for private use and afterwards embodied in his works, attest this.

This also, (he says in one of them,) this also we humbly and earnestly beg, that buman things may not prejudice such as are divine; neither that from the unlocking of the gates of the sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, anything of credulity or intellectual night may arise in our minds toward Divine mysteries. But rather that by our mind being thoroughly purged and cleansed from fancy and vanities, and yet subject and perfectly given up to the Divine oracles, there may be given unto faith the things that are faith's. Amen.

It is true, however, that with all our admiration for Bacon-for the astonishing range of his intellect, enabling him among other remarkable endowments to illustrate every proposition he announces in a manner which, though not owing its merits to any high poetical spirit, has the aptness, the suggestiveness, of poetry-we still cannot feel the charm which plays over the sentences of Milton, of Jeremy Taylor, nor even of Hooker. So much knowledge, such an exhaustless outpouring of the wisdom of intellectual experience, wearies. Still more, as it seems to me, are we inclined to doubt the soundness of his belief in knowledge as a moral instrument of good, and yet more to question his evident persuasion that the additions to human comfort and convenience which flow from useful inventions will do very much for human character.

We, who live at a time when all and more than all which Bacon anticipated from external civilization has been carried out, cannot but feel that some of his glowing speculations do not rest upon the right basis. It is true the world goes on, and will go on, adding to its external * Compare with the passage in Paradise Lost :

So much the rather, Thou, Celestial Light,
Shine onward,' &c.

facilities-improving itself,' in short; but the wisest and best of our race are surely in the right when they advise us not to trust to these outward advantages-not to be so boastful about the things done for us, but to look more within at what we do for ourselves. The power of the Press, the wonders of steam, the discoveries of science and their applications, the advantages of rapid interchange of commerce-all these are very astonishing, very indisputable facts; but looking at questions of mental and moral culture, one doubts whether the minds so busied in the outward are equally able to turn to the deeper lore of the spirit.

Writers of very high capacity have differed widely as to the particular virtues and vices of Bacon himself. We have Basil Montague and Mr. Spedding for, and Lord Macauley strongly against him, and Mr. Spedding really appears to have cleared away by conclusive evidence many of the worst charges against him; but the tendency of his philosophy still appears to me the same, and it would have seemed to be inseparable from the manner in which his own mind was turned to large surveys of particulars, rather than to the calmer contemplation of generals. He could see as it were at a glance, as Macauley says, 'the errors of two thousand years;' but they were the errors which impeded knowledge, rather than the growth of the individual mind in goodness. We all know Cowley's tribute to him :

'From these, and all, long, errors of the way

In which our wandering predecessors went,

And, like th' old Hebrews many years did stray,
In deserts of but small extent.

Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last;

The barren wilderness he past,

Did on the very border stand

Of the blest promis'd land,

And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,
Saw it himself, and show'd us it.'

Is it possible to suppress Macauley's eloquent amplification of this passage?

There (says he) we see the great lawgiver looking round from his lonely elevation on an infinite expanse; behind him, a wilderness of dreary sands and bitter waters, in which successive generations have sojourned-always moving yet never advancing, reaping no harvests, and building no abiding city; before him, a goodly land full of promise-a land flowing with milk and honey. While the multitude below saw only the flat sterile desert in which they had so long wandered, bounded on every side by a near horizon, or diversified only by some deceitful mirage, he was gazing from a far higher stand on a far lovelier country, following with his eyes the long course of fertilizing rivers through ample pastures and under the bridges of great capitals, measuring the distances of marts and havens, and portioning out all those wealthy regions from Dan to Beersheba.-Macauley's Critical Essays, small edition, 2 volumes.

Many a beautiful-nay, and simple-aphorism of Francis Bacon stirs in the memory as we read and think-an illustration of some grand truth of the very homeliest kind, yet perfect in its way. Here is one, on Scripture controversy.

Certainly, as those wines which flow from the first treading of the grape are sweeter and better than those forced out of the press, which have the roughness of the husk and stone, so are those doctrines best and wholesomest which flow from a gentle crush of the Scripture, and are not wrung into controversies and commonplace.

And again :

However men may amuse themselves, and admire, nay, almost adore the mind, 'tis certain, that like an irregular glass, it alters the rays of things, by its figure and different intersections.'

I have alluded (only) to Hooker and Jeremy Taylor. Time and space allow of little more; yet let me just advert to two specimens of the deep religious spirit of these men. The one, that of Hooker, is a letter addressed by him to the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift, from the Temple, bearing date somewhere in 1589. Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple in 1585, and held it till 1591, when, probably in consequence of this letter, he obtained the quiet country living he sought for. (at Boscombe in Wiltshire.)

What he complains of is the mental disturbance occasioned by his controversy with one Walter Travers, on Church discipline and some matters of doctrine. Travers was a Lecturer at the Temple, and had many adherents among those who were, like himself, inclined to the Genevan opinions. Now Hooker, meditating on these opinions, had been conducted to the belief that he might do greater service to God and the Church by a general survey rather than a controversial work on Ecclesiastical Polity; and thus desires, in the following beautiful letter, freedom from his then position. One of its remarkable points seems to me to be the gentle and kindly manner in which he speaks of his antagonist, Travers-so totally without bitterness or personal pique.

My Lord, (he writes,) when I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage. But I am weary of the noise and oppositions of this place ;* and indeed God and Nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. And, my Lord, my particular contests with Mr. Travers have proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man, and that belief hath occasioned me to examine my own conscience concerning his opinions. And to satisfy that, I have consulted the Holy Scripture and other laws, both human and divine, whether the conscience of him and others of his judgement, ought to be so far complied with by us as to alter our frame of Church government, our manner of God's worship, our praising and praying to Him, and our established ceremonies, as often as their tender consciences will require us. And in this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise in which I intend the satisfaction of others by a demonstration of the reasonableness of our laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. But, my Lord, I shall never be able to finish what I have begun, unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother earth, and eat my bread in peace and privacya place where I may without disturbance meditate my approaching mortality, and that great account which all flesh must give at the last day to the God of all spirits.

*

*

*The Temple.

How characteristic is this following sentence from another of his works

There will come a time when three words spoken with charity and meekness, shall receive a more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.

The second of the two specimens to which a reference has been made is from Jeremy Taylor-from his Polemical Discourses. It seems to me to breathe the same calmly devout and candid spirit as was manifest in Hooker's letter, but here the feeling of wrong and privation extended to public men and matters.

We have not only felt (says the divine) the evils of an intestine war, but God hath smitten us in our spirit. But I delight not to observe the correspondences of such sad accidents, which, as they may happen on divers causes, or may be forced violently by the strength of fancy, or drawn on by jealousy, and the too fond openings of troubled hearts and afflicted spirits, so they do but help to vex the offending part, and relieve the afflicted but with a fantastic and groundless comfort. I will therefore deny leave to my sorrows to ease themselves by complaining of others. I shall only crave leave to remember Jerusalem; and call to mind the pleasures of her temples, the order of her services, the beauty of her buildings, the sweetness of her songs, the decency of her ministrations, the assiduity and economy of her priests and Levites, the daily sacrifice, and that eternal fire of devotion that went not out by day nor by night. These were the pleasures of our peace: and there is a remanent felicity in the very memory of those spiritual delights which we then enjoyed as antepasts of Heaven and consignations to an immortality of joys. And it may be so again, when it shall please God, who hath the hearts of all princes in His hand, and turneth them as the rivers of water; and when men will consider the invaluable loss that is consequent, and the danger of sin that is appendant to the destroying such forms of discipline and devotion in which God was purely worshipped, and the Church was edified, and the people instructed to great degrees of piety, knowledge, and devotion.

In another passage from the dedication to the 'Liberty of Prophesying,' written during his retirement in Wales in the time of the Civil Wars, he says,

In this great storm, which hath dashed the vessel of the Church all in pieces, I have been cast upon the coast of Wales, and in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a greater vessel, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and hoping to ride safely, the storm followed me with such violence that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor; and here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons. And but that He who stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of its waves, and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or study. But I know not whether I have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy.

These are surely the words of a grand and lofty spirit. One reads them with a feeling of exultation in the thought that the cause which had such advocates was not crushed by the rough rule which for a time prevailed over it. Surely we may, with only a righteous degree of indignation,

reject the wholesale slanders which have not hesitated to confine the praise of piety to the Puritan section of the clergy of that day, and rest with somewhat of their own trust, and as much of their candour as we can, on the better knowledge which we obtain from the contemplation of these banished men in their quiet retreats.

That their afflictions did them good, we have no doubt; they came back to their homes with well tried love for the blessings which for a time had left their grasp. They came, having learnt some valuable lessons in their trials; and it was not always or often their fault if the religious party they now displaced, met with hard measure from the Government and its local administrators. But the subject of Priest and Presbyter would lead me much beyond my aim, which is simply that of pointing out a few passages from the writings of good Englishmen of a past day, that may serve the double purpose of winning our love for them, and for the noble manner in which their thoughts were expressed.