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a deep sense of the dignity, responsibility, and importance of the statesman's calling. The Queen often talked with him, and playfully called him her young Lord Keeper.

"So situated, it must have been as difficult for a young and susceptible imagination not to aspire after civil dignities as for a boy bred in camps not to long to be a soldier. But the time for these was not yet come. For the present

his field of ambition was still in the school-room and library; where, perhaps, from the delicacy of his constitution, he was more at home than in the playground. His career there was victorious; new prospects of boundless extent opening on every side; till at length, just about the age at which an intellect of quick growth begins to be conscious of original power, he was sent to the university, where he hoped to learn all that men knew. By the time, however, that he had gone through the usual course and heard what the various professors had to say, he was conscious of a disappointment. It seems that toward the end of the sixteenth century men neither knew nor aspired to know more than was to be learned from Aristotle. It was then [before he had completed his fifteenth year] that a thought struck him, the date of which deserves to be recorded, not for anything in the thought itself, which had probably occurred to others before him, but for its influence upon his after-life. If our study of nature be thus barren, he thought, our method of study must be wrong; might not a better method be found? The suggestion was simple and obvious. The singularity was in the way he took hold of it. He could at once imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works. Upon the conviction This may be done, followed at once the question How may it be done? Upon that question answered followed the resolution to try

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"Of Bacon's life I am persuaded that no man will ever form a correct idea, unless he bear in mind that from very early youth his heart was divided between these three ob

jects [the cause of reformed religion, of his native coun try, of the human race through all their generations], distinct but not discordant; and that though the last and in our eyes the greatest was his favorite and his own, the other two never lost their hold upon his affections. Not until he felt his years huddling and hurrying to their close did he consent to abandon the hope of doing something for them all; nor indeed is it easy to find any period of his life in which some fortunate turn of affairs might not have enabled him to fulfil it."

Bacon entered Parliament when he was twenty-four. This was the beginning of his active public life. The fortunes of a public man were very much bound up in those of some powerful person at court, and Bacon attached himself to the Earl of Essex. But Essex was now in, now out of favor with the Queen, and Bacon's fortunes fluctuated accordingly. For sixteen years Bacon continued his connection. At the end of that time it fell to him to take part in the prosecution of Essex for treason. Six years later, when James I. was on the throre, Bacon was made solicitor-general. He was promoted to be attorney-general in 1612, and in 1621 was created Viscount St. Albans. During all this time he had taken an active part in all the great discussions which went on in Parliament.

Not only his own strong tastes, but the circumstances of his life conspired, meanwhile, to promote his literary and philosophical studies. He was often out of favor and forced back into private life. When the Earl of Essex was embarking on his perilous course, which ended in his execution for treason, Bacon was pursuing ardently the great scheme which he had conceived in his youth, and from the time when he was about thirty-five till the end of his life he scarcely intermitted his labors. The results are in many volumes, written most in Latin, a few in English. His great contribution to human thought cannot be summed

up in a sentence, but it may be said that he so set forth the principles which should govern men in the study of nature as to give a great impetus to the human mind in its search for truth.

Something of the manner of his writing may be learned from his Essays. These he wrote in English. The whole collection would make a book of about two hundred pages like this, and it is the best known of his works, for, unlike his philosophical writings, his Essays speak directly to every intelligent man; they are the wise thoughts of a great man about matters which are of common interest to all men. In Bacon's own words: "I do now publish my Essays; which, of all my other works have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms."

When Bacon was created Baron Verulam of Verulam, he was also made Lord Chancellor, and held the high office which the name implies for three years, when there began to be complaint of abuses in the courts of justice and chancery. The abuses had long continued, but the attack upon them now involved the integrity of Bacon himself. He was found guilty, with others, of taking presents from those whose cases he was trying. There can be little doubt that he fell into customs already existing, but it would be unjust to assume that he was a corrupt judge. Nevertheless, like many others, careless in their inquiry into the right and wrong use of money, he was overtaken by the storm, and in so far as he was conspicuous, his fall was more marked. He was removed from office, and became a poor man. gled on in retirement, seeking a royal pardon, and endeav oring to finish his great philosophical work. It was a bitter close of a great life, and the nobility of the man appears in a sentence which he wrote at this time of personal disgrace

He strug

"I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty

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