The first that had to be dealt with was the union of England and Scotland. We have seen that he had come away from his first interview with the King with an impression that he was "hastening to a mixture of both kingdoms and nations, faster perhaps than policy would conveniently bear." Now as much haste as was compatible with good speed, no man could wish for more than Bacon himself: for no man saw sooner or more clearly that England, well united with Scotland, had all natural requirements for becoming the greatest monarchy in the world. But he knew that things would not unite by being merely put together, and that perfect mixture required many conditions, of which time was one of the most indispensable. And I suppose it was in the hope, not merely of drawing a little attention to his own pretensions as a scholar and a thinker (though that was something), but also of tempering the King's impatience and reconciling him to the cautious pace at which it would be necessary to go, that he took leave to present him with a short philosophical treatise concerning the conditions under which perfect union takes place in nature-an essay still interesting, both as a specimen of the Philosophia Prima, applied to a particular business in the details and practical management of which he was soon to be deeply engaged, and as showing that it was not as a member of the Learned Counsel, but as a scholar, a student, and a man of contemplation, that he chose to make his first approaches:-a fact agreeing very well with my supposition that he regarded this as (for the present at least) his proper vocation and most promising career. And yet his aim is not the less practical, and bearing on the immediate business; for the conclusion is, that Nature and Time must be left to do the work, and that artificial forcing will only spoil the operation: the very warning which the King stood most in need of.

This little tract is said to have been printed in 1603, in 12mo,1 but I never met with a copy. There is, however, a good manuscript of it in the Harleian Collection, in the hand (if I am not mistaken) of the transcriber of the Valerius Terminus;' and if so, contemporary and authentic,2 and it is printed in the Resuscitatio. The text here given is formed upon a collation of these two.

Whence Bacon derived his idea of the nature of the Persian Magic, is a question with which we need not trouble ourselves here. For the present occasion it is enough to know that it was formerly the subject of many speculations; inferences perhaps from a remark in Plato, that the princes of Persia were instructed in politics and in magic by the same persons;-and that the method of analogy in

1 Birch's edition of Bacon's Works, vol. iii. p. 257.

2 See Philosophical Works, Vol. III. p. 206.

which Bacon supposed it to consist was believed by him, not only at this time but ever after, to be a sound one.1

A BRIEF DISCOURSE TOUCHING THE HAPPY UNION OF THE KINGDOMS OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND.

Dedicated in private to His Majesty.2

I do not find it strange (excellent King) that when Heraclitus, he that was surnamed the obscure, had set forth a certain book which is not now extant, many men took it for a discourse of nature, and many others took it for a treatise of policy and matter of estate. For there is a great affinity and consent between the rules of nature, and the true rules of policy: the one being nothing else but an order in the government of the world, and the other an order in the government of an estate. And therefore the education and erudition of the kings of Persia was in a science which was termed by a name then of great reverence, but now degenerate and taken in ill part: for the Persian magic, which was the secret literature of their kings, was an observation of the contemplations of nature and an application thereof to a sense politic; taking the fundamental laws of nature, with the branches and passages of them, as an original and first model, whence to take and describe a copy and imitation for government.

After this manner the aforesaid instructors set before their kings the examples of the celestial bodies, the sun, the moon, and the rest, which have great glory and veneration, but no rest or intermission; being in a perpetual office of motion, for the cherishing, in turn and in course, of inferior bodies: expressing likewise the true manner of the motions of government, which though they ought to be swift and rapid in respect of dispatch and the occasions, yet are they to be constant and regular, without wavering or confusion.

So did they represent unto them how the heavens do not enrich themselves by the earth and the seas, nor keep no dead stock or untouched treasures of that they draw to them from below; but whatsoever moisture they do levy and take from

1 See Advancement of Learning,' Philos. Works, Vol. III. p. 348; and De Aug. Scient. Vol. I. p. 542.

2 Harl. MSS. 532, fo. 61.

3 an application of the contemplations and observations of nature unto: R.

both elements in vapours, they do spend and turn back again in showers; only holding and storing them up for a time, to the end to issue and distribute them in season.

But chiefly they did express and expound unto them the fundamental law of nature, whereby all things do subsist and are preserved; which is, That every thing in nature, although it have his private and particular affection and appetite, and doth follow and pursue the same in small moments, and when it is delivered and free from more general and common respects, yet nevertheless when there is question or case for sustaining of the more general, they forsake their own particularities and proprieties, and attend and conspire to uphold the public.

So we see the iron in small quantity will ascend and approach to the loadstone upon a particular sympathy: but if it be any quantity of moment, it leaveth his appetite of amity with the loadstone, and like a good patriot falleth to the earth, which is the place and region of massy bodies.

So again the water and other like bodies do fall towards the centre of the earth, which is (as was said) their region or country: and yet we see nothing more usual in all water-works and engines, than that the water (rather than to suffer any distraction or disunion in nature) will ascend, forsaking the love to his own region or country, and applying itself to the body next adjoining.

But it were too long a digression to proceed to more examples of this kind. Your Majesty yourself did fall upon a passage of this nature in your gracious speech of thanks unto your counsel, when acknowledging princely their vigilancies1 and well-deservings, it pleased you to note, that it was a success and event above the course of nature, to have so great change with so great a quiet forasmuch as sudden and great mutations, as well in state as in nature, are rarely without violence and perturbation. So as still I conclude there is (as was said) a congruity between the principles of Nature and Policy. And lest that instance may seem to oppone to this assertion, I may even in that particular, with your Majesty's favour, offer unto you a type or pattern in nature, much resembling this event in your estate; namely earthquakes, which many of them bring ever much terror and wonder, but no actual hurt; the earth trembling for a moment, and suddenly stablishing in perfect quiet as it was before.

1 vigilancie: MS.

This knowledge then, of making the government of the world a mirror for the government of a state, being a wisdom almost lost (whereof the reason I take to be because of the difficulty for one man to embrace both philosophies) I have thought good to make some proof (as far as my weakness and the straits of time will suffer) to revive in the handling of one particular, wherewith now I most humbly present your Majesty. For truly (as hath been said) it is a form of discourse anciently used towards kings; and to what king should it be more proper than to a king that is studious to conjoin contemplative virtue and active virtue together?

Your Majesty is the first king that had the honour to be lapis angularis, to unite these two mighty and warlike nations of England and Scotland under one sovereignty and monarchy. It doth not appear by the records and monuments1 of any true history, nor scarcely by the fiction and pleasure of any fabulous narration or tradition of any antiquity, that ever? this island of Great Britain was united under one king before this day. And yet there be no mountains nor races of hills, there be no seas nor great rivers, there is no diversity of tongue or language, that hath invited or provoked this ancient separation or divorce. The lot of Spain was to have the several kingdoms of the continent (Portugal only except) to be united, in an age not long past; and now in our age that of Portugal also, which was the last that held out, to be incorporate with the rest. The lot of France hath been much about the same time likewise to have re-annexed to that crown the several duchies and portions which were in former times dismembered. The lot of this island is the last, reserved for your Majesty's happy times by the special providence and favour of God, who hath brought your Majesty to this happy conjunction with great consent of hearts, and in the strength of your years, and in the maturity of your experience. It resteth therefore but that (as I promised) I set before your Majesty's princely consideration the grounds of nature touching the union and commixture of bodies, and the correspondency which they have with the grounds of policy in the conjunction of states and kingdoms.

First, therefore, that position Vis unita fortior, being one of the common notions of the mind, needeth not much to be in2 tradition, that ever, of any antiquity: R.

1 memories: R.

duced or illustrated. We see the sun (when he entereth and while he continues under the sign of Leo) causeth more vehement heats than when he is in Cancer, what time his beams are nevertheless more perpendicular. The reason whereof, in great part, hath been truly ascribed to the conjunction and corradiation in that place of heaven of the sun with the four stars of the first magnitude, Sirius, Canicula, Cor Leonis, and Cauda Leonis.

So the moon likewise, by ancient tradition, while she is in the same sign of Leo, is said to be at the heart, or to respect the heart which is not for any affinity which that place of heaven can have with that part of man's body, but only because the moon is then (by reason of the conjunction and nearness with the stars aforenamed) in greatest strength of influence, and so worketh upon that part in inferior bodies which is most vital and principal.

So we see waters and liquors in small quantity do easily putrefy and corrupt; but in large quantity subsist long, by reason of the strength they receive by union.

So in earthquakes, the more general do little hurt, by reason of the united weight which they offer to subvert; but narrow and particular earthquakes have many times overturned whole towns and cities.

So then this point touching the force of union is evident. And therefore it is more fit to speak of the manner of union. Wherein again it will not be pertinent to handle one kind of union, which is union by victory; when one body doth merely subdue another, and converteth the same into his own nature, extinguishing and expulsing what part soever of it it cannot overcome. As when the fire converteth the wood into fire, purging away the smoke and the ashes as unapt matter to inflame: or when the body of a living creature doth convert and assimilate food and nourishment, purging and expelling whatsoever it cannot convert. For these representations do answer in matter of policy to union of countries by conquest; where the conquering state doth extinguish, extirpate, and expulse any part of the state conquered, which it findeth so contrary as it cannot alter and convert it. And therefore, leaving violent unions, we will consider only of natural unions.

The difference is excellent which the best observers in nature