hold.1 He wished to retire to his own residence at York House; but this was refused. He was ordered to proceed to his seat at Gorhambury, whence he was not to remove, and where he remained, though very reluctantly, till the ensuing spring. The heavy fine was remitted. But as he had lived in great pomp, he had economized naught from his legitimate or ill-gotten gains. As he was now insolvent, a pension of twelve hundred pounds a year was bestowed on him; from his estate and other revenues he derived thirteen hundred pounds per annum more. On the 17th of October, his remaining penalties were remitted. It cannot but strike the reader as a most remarkable circumstance that, within eighteen months of the condemnation, all the penalties were successively remitted. Would this induce the belief that he was but the scape-goat of the court, that the condemnation was purely political? It is, we believe, to be explained ostensibly by the advanced age of Bacon, but really by the circumstance that the King's favorite, Buckingham, was an accomplice. Bacon discovered, alas! when it was too late, that the talent God had given him he had "misspent in things for which he was least fit;" or as Thomson has beautifully expressed it: 2 Hapless in his choice, Unfit to stand the civil storm of state, And through the smooth barbarity of courts, To urge his course; him for the studious shade Kind Nature form'd; deep, comprehensive, clear, Plato, the Stagyrite and Tully join'd. The great deliverer he! 1 The Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles the First, was before he ascended the throne the patron of Bacon, who said of him in his will, "my most gracious sovereign, who ever when he was prince was my patron." 2 The Seasons. It is gratifying to turn from the melancholy scenes exhibited by the political life of Bacon, to behold him in his study in the deep search of truth; no contrast is more striking than that between the chancellor and the philosopher, or, as Macaulay has well termed it, "Bacon seeking for truth, and Bacon seeking for the Seals- Bacon in speculation, and Bacon in action." From amidst clouds and darkness we emerge into the full blaze and splendor of midday light. We now find Bacon wholly devoting himself to the pursuits for which nature adapted him, and from which no extent of occupation could entirely detach him. The author redeemed the man; in the philosopher and the poet there was no weakness, no corruption. Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, Here the writer yielded not to vitia temporis ; but combated them with might and main, with heart and soul. In 1623, he published the Life of Henry VII. In a letter addressed to the Queen of Bohemia with a copy, he says pathetically: "Time was I had honor without leisure, and now I have leisure without honor." But his honor without leisure had precipitated him into "bottomless perdition; " his leisure without honor retrieved his name, and raised him again to an unattainable height. In the following year, he printed his Latin translation of the Advancement of Learning, under the title of De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. This was not, however, a mere translation; for he made in it omissions and alterations; and appears to have added about one third new matter; in short, he remodelled it. His work, replete with poetry and beautiful imagery, was received with applause throughout Europe. It was reprinted in France in 1624, one year after its appearance in England. It was immediately translated into French and Italian, and was published in Holland, the great book-mart of that time, in 1645, 1650, and 1662. In 1624, he solicited of the King a remission of the sentence, to the end, says he, "that blot of ignominy may be removed from me and from my memory with posterity." The King granted him a full pardon. But he never more took his seat in the House of Lords. When the new Parliament met, after the accession of Charles the First, age, infirmity, and tardy wisdom had extinguished the ambition of Baron Verulam, Viscount St. Albans. When the writ of summons to the Parliament reached him, he exclaimed: "I have done with such vanities!" But the philosopher pursued his labor of love; he published new editions of his writings, and translated them into Latin, from the mistaken notion that in that language alone could they be rescued from oblivion. His crabbed latinity is now read but by few, or even may be said to be nearly forgotten; while his noble, majestic English is read over the whole British empire, on which the sun never sets, is studied and admired throughout the old world and the new, and it will be so by generations still unborn; it will descend to posterity in company with his contemporary, Shakspeare, (whose name he never mentions,) and will endure as long as the great and glorious language itself; indeed, as he foretold of his Essays, it "will live as long as books last." In the translation of his works into Latin, he was assisted by Rawley, his future biographer, and his two friends, Ben Jonson, the poet, and Hobbes, the philosopher. He wrote for his "own recreation," amongst very serious studies, a Collection of Apophthegms, New and Old, said to have been dictated in one rainy day, but probably the result of several "rainy days." This contains many excellent jocular anecdotes, and has been, perhaps, with too much indulgence, pronounced by Macaulay to be the best jest-book in the world. 66 He commenced a Digest of the Laws of England, but he soon discontinued it, because it was a work of assistance, and that which he could not master by his own forces and pen." James the First had not sufficient elevation of mind to afford him the means of securing the assistance he required. .... He wrote his will with his own hand on the 19th of December, 1625. He directs that he shall be interred in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albans : "There was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion-house at Gorhambury. For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." This supreme act of filial piety towards his gifted mother is affecting. Let no "uncharitable" word be uttered over his last solemn behest; foreign. nations and all ages will not refuse a tribute of homage to his genius! Gassendi presents an analysis of his labors, and pays a tribute of admiration to their author; Descartes has mentioned him with encomium; Malebranche quotes him as an authority; Puffendorff expressed admiration of him; the University of Oxford presented to him, after his fall, an address, in which he is termed 66 a mighty Hercules, who had by his own hand greatly ad vanced those pillars in the learned world, which by the rest of the world were supposed immovable." Leibnitz ascribed to him the revival of true philosophy; Newton had studied him so closely that he adopted even his phraseology; Voltaire and D'Alembert have rendered him popular in France. The modern philosophers of all Europe regard him reverentially as the father of experimental philosophy. He attempted at this late period of his life a metrical translation into English of the Psalms of David; although his prose is full of poetry, his verse has but little of the divine art. He again declined to take his seat as a peer in Charles's second Parliament; but the last stage of his life displayed more dignity and real greatness than the "pride, pomp, and circumstance "of his high offices and honors. The public of England and of "foreign nations" forgot the necessity of "charitable speeches" and anticipated "the next ages." The most distinguished foreigners repaired to Gray's Inn to pay their respects to him. The Marquis d'Effiat, who brought over to England the Princess Henrietta Maria, the wife of Charles the First, went to see him. Bacon, confined to his bed, but unwilling to decline the visit, received him with the curtains drawn. "You resemble the angels," said the French minister to him, "we hear those beings continually talked of; we believe them superior to mankind; and we never have the consolation to see them." But in ill health and infirmity he continued his studies and experiments; as it occurred to him that snow might preserve animal substances from putrefaction as well as salt, he tried the experiment, and stuffed a fowl with snow with his own hands. "The great apostle of experimental philosophy was |