The increasing interest in the fame and the works of this greatest of modern philosophers speaks well for the age in which it is breaking forth. A new edition of his works was some years since published by Longman and Company. And we have before us a copy of his Essays, with annotations by Archbishop Whately, deserving the highest praise for the justice therein done to the subject. This edition is a very creditable one, and can well vie with that of Longman and Company, which has been characterized as "princely." We avail our selves of the opportunity thus afforded us to say a few words of the man who is, as it were, just beginning to be appreciated.

As Shakspeare was almost unknown until Milton brought him into notice, and Milton quite so until Addison, in the "Spectator," spread his beauty and sublimity before the general gaze; so Bacon has had to wait for the "next ages" to make his merits known. And even now, when his works are acquiring their just estimation, his character as a man is the subject of great dispute.

While Lord Chancellor, he was impeached for corruption in office, and out of that has grown the stain upon his character. Pope spoke of him as the

"Wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind :"

Hume, amid his laudation of his genius, speaks of Bacon's own "consciousness of his guilt." Macaulay, in his essays, is savagely severe alike on his character and his philosophy; and the late Lord Campbell, in his "Lives of the Chancellors"-as amusing as they are gossiping and superficial receives, without question, all the imputations cast upon him by party virulence, which raged with a violence unknown in any other period of English history.

On the other hand, Ben Jonson, who was his contemporary, was to the last an admirer of him; and Shakspeare was his companion and friend. Archbishop Tennison, who was a contemporary of his age, was his defender; and Rushworth, in his Historical Collections of the time, speaks of him as a "learned peer, eminent over the Christian world for his many writings;" and "his decrees were generally made with so much equity, never any made by him was reversed as unjust."

It cannot be unprofitable to spend a moment in the inquiry which of these judgments is the just one; the more especially as our readers will share with us in our regrets, if we are compelled to unite in the moral condemnation of one whose sentiments are so elevating, and

whose philosophy is so profound that he is almost universally regarded as the 'greatest philosopher that thirty centuries have produced. He was born in January, 1560. In 1607 he was appointed Solicitor-General. In 1612 he became Attorney-General. He became LordKeeper in 1616, and Lord-Chancellor in 1618. Knighted in 1603, and created Baron of Verulam in 1618, he became Viscount St. Albans in 1619.

In 1621 he was impeached by the House of Commons for receiving presents from suitors. He surrendered his office of Chancellor, and was convicted by the House of Lords and sentenced to a fine of forty thousand pounds, to imprisonment during the King's pleasure, and to incapacity to hold any other office or to sit in Parliament.

A proposition to deprive him of his peerage, which would have involved a conviction of moral guilt, was defeated by the united vote of the Bishops, and his sentence was confined to the political delinquency. He was committed to the Tower, but released after two days' confinement. The fine was remitted, the other penalties ultimately removed, and after five years of private life, devoted to literary pursuits, he died in March, 1625.

So entirely was the judgment pronounced upon his impeachment reversed or released, that on the accession of Charles the First in 1625, he was summoned to take his seat in the House of Lords, but was prevented by illhealth; and during the interval that elapsed between his degradation from office and his death, he was more honoured by foreigners than any man in England, and so even by his own countrymen, that on one occasion when he was met with a train of people following him, Prince Charles was constrained to say: "Well, do what we can, this man scorns to go out like a snuff."

When the charges were first preferred against him, he determined to defend himself, and so announced to the King and to the House of Lords. But the King sought a private interview with him, and after that interview Bacon abandoned his defence and pleaded guilty. It is out of that confession that the casual reader of history draws his reason for condemning him, but unjustly it is supposed, for there is good reason to believe that yielding to the importunity of the King, he made a voluntary sacrifice of himself to save the master to whom he owed his elevation. His confession and his fall, then, instead of demonstrating his guilt, may well be regarded as lofty evidence of a generous devotion of himself to a sense of duty and the obligations of gratitude.

Let us see if facts warrant this conclusion. Let us see if the man, whose piety was as fervent as it was unpretending, whose whole life was distinguished for kindness, courteousness, and humanity, who was eminently disinterested amid corruption and intrepid amid all-pervading servility, and who is styled by historians "the glory and ornament of his age and nation," was the victim of a paltry vice or of splendid virtuesuffered in just expiation of misconduct, or as a willing sacrifice to an exalted sense of duty.

His father was Lord-Keeper under Elizabeth, an office which performs the duties of Chancellor when that office is vacant. His uncle, Lord Burleigh, was Elizabeth's Prime Minister. His cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, was her Secretary of State: and he was himself such a favourite with the Queen, that in his boyhood she called him her "young Lord Keeper."

The tendency of his early years was to a life of study, but his father's death and the fortune of a younger son compelled him to select some profession. He chose that of the law, and turned his attention to politics as the means of rising to distinction. He little dreamed of his own powers as a philosopher, but followed the bent which early association had given his mind toward public life.

During Elizabeth's reign, however, he was doomed to disappointment. The Cecils pronounced him too much of a wit to be a statesman, and the Queen had taken offence at the freedom with which as a Member of Parliament he had advocated reform. And it is worthy of remark in passing, that that speech was translated in France and greatly admired there, and was doubtless the foundation-stone of the French Code, while in England it has as yet borne but little fruit, though admitted by all instructed minds to have been profoundly wise and farreaching. Festina lente is too much the habit of English institutions to allow as yet an adoption of his suggestions, even though advocated by a Brougham.

In the reign of James the First, however, he still persisted in his pursuit of official station; and it was not until he made his power felt as a Member of Parliament that his cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, then become Earl of Salisbury and Lord Treasurer, permitted the way to be opened to him. Thenceforth his rise was rapid. He soon outstripped his great rival Coke, and enjoyed the confidence of the King beyond every one, except the unworthy favourite Buckingham. For more than twenty years he had struggled against disappointment, and when the darling object of his pursuit was obtained in the highest position which a subject could occupy, his gratitude to the King, to the Prince and to Buckingham was ardently expressed and-for there was no hypocrisy in him-it was as strongly felt.

The Cecils were right. He was not fitted to be a politician in a corrupt and turbulent age. He was too unselfish, too confiding, too sensitive. And while with him gratitude was an abiding principle, working itself into his very

being, he never dreamed that they whom he was faithfully serving with a genius that

"A gleam around their nothingness cast,”

could cast him off and whistle him down the wind. The fate of Strafford, sacrificed by the succeeding monarch, came too late to be a warning to him. He was destined, however, to have the sincerity of his gratitude put to the test. The King had an interview with him; the records of the House of Lords show that. Before that interview he had determined on a defence: after that interview he abandoned that defence. He has left us no account of what then passed between him and the selfish pedagogue who filled the throne. Among his papers were some which never saw the light-papers which his chaplain described as touching matters of estate which tread too near the heels of truth and to the times of the persons concerned”

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which he committed to the care of others, with injunctions that "they should be preserved but not divulged, as touching too much on persons or matters of state," and which it would not do to give to the world as long as the Stuarts reigned. But long afterward and late in life, one who had been intrusted with the secret, darkly hints at what then passed by telling us what Bacon said. "Now, though my Lord saw his approaching ruin, and told his Majesty there was little hope of mercy in a multitude where his enemies were to give fire, if he did not plead for himself; yet such was his obedience to him from whom he had his being, that he resolved his majesty's will should be his only law, and so took leave of him with these words: 'Those that will strike at your Chancellor it is much to be feared will strike at your crown,' and wished that as he was then the first, so he might be the last of these sacrifices."

But there has lately, and only during 1860, come to light an important item of evidence on this subject. It must be borne in mind that the interview that Bacon had with the King was in April, 1621, just before he withdrew his defence. James died in March, 1625. March, 1623, Bacon wrote to Conway, First Secretary of State, as follows:

In

"Good Mr. Secretary: When you did me the honour and favour to visit me, you did not only in general terms express your love unto me, but as a real friend asked me whether I had any particular occasion wherein I might make use of you. At that time I had none;

now there is one fallen.

It is that Mr.

Thomas Murray, Provost of Eton, (whom I love very fortune. The college and school I do not doubt but well,) is like to die. It were a pretty cell for my I shall make to flourish. His Majesty, when I waited on him, took notice of my wants, and said to me that as he was a king he would have care of me. This is a thing somebody must have, and costs his Majesty nothing. I have written two or three words to his Majesty which I would pray you to deliver. I have not expressed this particular to his Majesty, but referred it to your relation. My most noble friend the Marquis is now absent. Next to him, I could not

"Gray's Inn, 25 March, 1623."

There is corroborative evidence of this elsewhere, as will appear in the sequel. But from this who can doubt to what motive it is just to attribute the withdrawal of his defence? On the one hand, we have but to believe Bacon capable of the lofty virtue of sacrificing himself from a principle of gratitude; and all his life and his writings are consistent with the idea of his being equal to such a flight. And on the other, we are to adopt the paradox-which sounds well enough in an epigram, but will stand no test of common-sense-that he who is the "wisest and brightest" can also be the "meanest" of mankind! Nay! that is not the only inconsistency we are to run a tilt with.

That Bacon did receive presents from suitors, is undoubtedly true. Now, if that was from the base love of money, then he was the "mean" man the poet paints him. But if it was because such was the custom of his age and of ages long before him, and in compliance with the idea not yet wholly abandoned even with us, that the suitor ought to be at the expense of settling his controversies, then it was no fault of his, but of his time: it was what he called it, vitia temporis, not vitia hominis.

But Bacon retired from office poorer than when he went in. All the eminent lawyers of the time were rich except Bacon. Coke was one of the richest commoners in England, and he was penurious, for it is said he refused to pay Buckingham ten thousand pounds for the office of Chancellor, but by servility and not bribery restored himself to court favour and a seat in the Privy Council.

Coke by servility, and Popham by corruption, made themselves rich; yet Bacon remained poor, and that when he had enjoyed all the chances they had, for he had served the government fourteen years, when such service could be a sure passport to wealth.

Buckingham, by servility, became Lord-Admiral and a Duke. Montague gave twenty thousand pounds for the office of Treasurer, and was created Earl of Manchester and Lord Privy Seal. They escaped unscathed. Bacon had neither servility nor money to offer, and he fell a sacrifice, and was succeeded by one who made up in servility to the favourite all of Bacon's short-comings.

While in Parliament he was ever the advocate of reform, well knowing how he perilled his advancement, and that he actually did retard it for twenty years, when he as well knew that with his talents and a sufficient complaisance he could command it at pleasure. All accounts agree that he was not avaricious, grasping, or a lover of money. He gave up stations yielding an annual emolument of seven thousand eight hundred pounds for a salary of nine hundred and eighteen pounds and fifteen shillings.

was never noted for an avaricious man." Rushworth, the annalist of the time, says: "He was known to be no admirer of money." Sergeant Crowe, on the trial of Wraynham for libelling the Lord Chancellor, said: "You cannot traduce him of corruption, for thanks be to God! he hath always despised riches."

Bacon valued a good name above all earthly things. In the Essay on Honour and Reputation now before us, he says: "There is an honour likewise which may be ranked among the greatest, which happeneth rarely, that is, of such as sacrifice themselves to death or danger for the good of their country."

He is represented by Chalmers as distinguished in private life for "the gentleness and affability of his deportment," and in public life fer" independence of mind and intrepidity in the discharge of his duty." And by Hume as "universally admired for the greatness of his genius, and beloved for the courteousness and humanity of his behaviour." And yet we are to believe that this man was guilty of the paltry vice of accepting bribes of a few hundred pounds! and was, as Hume says, conscious of his guilt! At all events, the question is before us, Was his fall the consequence of a paltry vice, involving the most unreflecting selfishness; or of exalted virtue, devoting himself to the principle of gratitude?

There is yet much more to be said on this subject-much more proof that can be adduced to substantiate our views. "His fall was the tale of a great revolution. It is the story of the passage of a whole people from one moral state to another; of the sickness and death of a most ancient system of government; of the birth and inauguration of a new political life;" and it may be added that it was the birth of a new truth, and truth is ever born with many a bitter pang, and most to him who gives it birth.

P. S.: While writing this paper, we have met with a series of articles in the London Atheneum on this subject, to which we are indebted for some thoughts and for the letter to Secretary Conway. In one respect we differ with the writer of those articles. He attributes the fall of Bacon to the malice of Coke and the complicity of Buckingham. We cannot think so. No doubt the enmity of Coke, who was then a Member of Parliament, gave direction and force to the attack; but that alone, or even aided by the co-operation of Buckingham, could not have worked the result. Parliament was anything but subservient to the crown or the favourite at that time.

No! there was something deeper than this. The contest between Protestanism and Romanism, which began in the reign of Henry the Eighth, was not yet ended. The House of Tudor, under the strong rule of Henry and his daughter Elizabeth, and the House of Stuart, under the elder James and Charles, alike asserted the broad doctrine that the Crown was responsible to God alone. Against that idea