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it down with a cup of ale to compose his spirits and send him to sleep. In the spring he was fond of a glass of spiced pomegranate wine early in the morning, and greatly enjoyed water-cresses. These little points may be unimportant in themselves, but they assist us in drawing a mental portrait of the man. During the three first years which succeeded his retirement from public life his health was good; the great care he took of himself, and the regular life he led, warded off attacks of the disorders to which we have referred. The year 1625 was remarkable for the sickness which prevailed, and the friends of Bacon saw with grief a perceptible decay in his health and strength. In this year he published a volume of apophthegms, said to be the result of a morning's dictation as a recreation in sickness, and also a translation of some of the Psalms of David, which, in a dedication to his friend George Herbert, he states was a poore exercise of my sicknesse." This was the last of his literary labors. In the autumn he retired to Gorhambury, and on the 29th of October, he writes, "I thank God, by means of the sweet air of the country I have obtained some degree of health." His feeble frame was, however, unequal to contend against the severe winter of 1625, and serious fears were entertained for his life. On the 19th of December, thinking that his course was well nigh run, he made his will-that remarkable document in which he touchingly appeals to the liberality of future generations. my fame and memorie, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, to foreign nations, and the next ages."

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The genial influence of the spring of 1626 wrought a favorable change in his health; his spirits revived, and his strength increased, sufficiently to enable him to return to his favorite seclusion in Gray's Inn.

It was on the 2d of April of that year that the life of this illustrious man was brought to a close. It is to be regretted that the accounts which have come down to us of the sad event are but meagre, but happily the chief particulars have been preserved. In contemplation of a new edition of his Natural History he was keenly examining the subject of anti-septics, or the best means of preventing putrefaction in animal substances. It struck him that flesh might as well be preserved by snow as by salt. From the length and severity of the winter he expected that snow might still, in shaded situations, be discovered on the ground. Dr. Witherborne, the king's physician, agreed to accompany

him, and assist him in a little excursion to make the experiment. At Highgate they found snow lying behind a hedge in great abundance, and, entering a cottage, they purchased a fowl recently killed. The philosopher, with a keen sense of enjoyment of the experiment, insisted on stuffing the body of the fowl with snow with his own hands. Soon after, the cold and damp struck him with a chill, and he began to shiver. He was carried to his coach, but was so seriously indisposed that he could not travel back to Gray's Inn, and was conveyed to the house of his friend, the Earl of Arundel, at Highgate. There he was hospitably received, and, out of ceremony, placed in the state-bed; but it was damp, not having been slept in for a year before, and he became worse. A messenger was immediately despatched for his old and tried friend Sir Julius Cæsar, Master of the Rolls, who immediately hastened to him. The next day he was a little better, and was able to dictate the following letter to the Earl of Arundel, which proved his dying effort. The allusion to the success of the experiment proves that, despite of his illness, the fowl had been preserved, and is another illustration of "the ruling passion strong in death."

"MY VERY GOOD LORD,

"I was likely to have had fortune of Cajius Plinius the Elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of Mount Vesuvius; for I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey between London and Highgate, I was taken with such a fit of casting (vomiting) as I knew not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit or cold, or, indeed, a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your housekeeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it; for, indeed, your lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I

am sure you give me to it. I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than mine own, but by my troth my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness that I cannot steadily hold a pen."

It is evident that Bacon did not think he was dying when he wrote this, but inflammation supervened, and early in the morning of Easter Sunday, 1626, he expired in the arms of Sir Julius Caesar, who, having shared with Sir Thomas Meautys the glory of steadily

adhering to him through all his reverses, had the satisfaction of affording consolation at that dark hour when it is most needed, and the comfort of rendering the last sacred offices of friendship, when the immortal spirit had taken its flight.

After careful consideration of the case, there can be little doubt that the attack which was the immediate cause of death was that form of pulmonary disease called Peripneumonia Notha. Chronic bronchitis, or inflammation of the larger air-tubes of the lungs, is a common complaint of persons advanced in years, and is apt to be converted by exposure to cold into the disease we have mentioned, a characteristic symptom of which is, the secretion, in immense quantities, of viscid mucus which chokes up the lungs, and kills the patient by suffocation, if relief is not afforded by appropriate treatment.

Thus died, in the sixty-sixth year of his age, Francis Bacon, who, notwithstanding all his faults, was one of the greatest ornaments and benefactors of the human race.

A pleasing feature in that great man's character was the love he bore to the memory of his mother; she was a woman of remarkable talent and learning, and from her careful tuition her son derived much of his early knowledge; it was by her care and tender solicitude that his constitution, naturally feeble, acquired strength and his frame health. Through life he regarded her memory with affection, and left special directions in his will that his mortal remains should repose by hers.

No pompous funeral attended the body of the great philosopher to its last resting-place; a few choice and sincere friends shed tears over his coffin, which was interred in the most simple manner in the church of St. Mi

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chael's, near St. Albans. This church is built within the precincts of the ancient city of Verulam, and crowning a gentle undulation of the surface, forms a beautiful feature in the landscape. It was founded about the middle of the tenth century, by Abbot Ulsinus, and bears ample evidence of the original Saxon architecture. For some time the spot where lay the remains of Bacon was unmarked by stone or monument, but the omission was nobly supplied by the munificence of his late secretary, Sir Thomas Meautys. By him a statue was erected, representing Bacon absorbed in meditation; his head rests upon his hand, and the design is in a style of classic elegance.

We have thus endeavored to place before our readers a brief sketch of an interesting portion of the life of the immortal founder of true philosophy-a life which was terminated in a characteristic manner by his obtaining, in addition to other distinctions, the diadem of a martyr to science. When young, like Milton, he felt that he was destined for great things. "I confess," said he, " that I have as vast contemplative ends as I have moderate civil ends." We cannot but regret that his lot was cast in such a mould that his own magnificent conceptions were but partially carried out. Had he been enabled to devote the whole of his life to the extensive field of philosophic inquiry, his character would have come down to us pure and spotless; could he have borne his burden in that promised land,- -a land to him flowing with milk and honey, not only would mankind have been immeasurably more his debtors, but his countrymen could have pointed him out with honest pride, not only as the greatest philosopher, but as one of the most perfect characters of all races and all ages.

TREES OF INDIA.-The grass trees which grow in India, it is thought, would flourish equally well in the Middle States of this country. One of our missionaries to China, Rev. Mr. MacGowan, writes of the grass cloth:

"I would call your attention particularly to the seeds of the plant from which the fibre is obtained for manufacturing 'grass cloth.' At the request of the Agricultural Society of India, (at Calcutta,) I have drawn up an account of the article, which may be

useful to those who may feel disposed to attempt its introduction into the United States. The report will probably appear in the transactions of the society for 1848-49. In my opinion the soil and climate of the Middle States are adapted to this plant. The cloth is expensive, owing to the tedious manner of separating the fibre. It may be presumed, however, that our mechanicians would soon devise means for overcoming that difficulty."

From Hogg's Instructor.

SIR DAVID BREWSTER.

THE Scotchman looks in vain beyond the, last fifty years for the intellectual glory of his country. That mental vigor, and depth, and capacity, and perspicacity, which so distinguish the Scottisii mind, had only flashed out in premonitory scintillations before the scepticism of Hume aroused it from its sleep of ages, and developed it in all its thoughtful majesty and strength. While England was listening to the graphic and glowing strains of the accomplished Chaucer, Scotland was imbibing ferocity from the screamings of the slogan; and when England had given to mental philosophy and poetry a Bacon, a Locke, a Shakspeare, and a Milton, her northern sister had still to deplore the sterility of her genius. It is true that Sir David Lindsay, and Dunbar had struck the harp to higher strains than those which generally characterized Scottish poetical expression; and that John Knox and George Buchanan had invested Scotch controversy with a wild and earnest genius, as well as high scholastic dignity; these, however, were only the precursory flashes of a deeply-hidden fountain of mental fire. They shone amidst a nation rude, and stern, and dark; as if to let that nation know her innate strength of mind and the capacities which she possessed for assuming a dignified position in the arena of intellect.

There is no doubt that Scotland was never destitute of minds of the first order and power. Fierce, fiery energy, and indomitable courage, joined to speculative ideality, were always characteristics of the Scotch; but these qualities were for centuries only exhibited upon the field of war, or the field of polemical strife; and the men who might have enlightened a grateful world with the light of art, or poetry, or mental philosophy, or science, passed away into a dark oblivion, after having struggled their brief hour upon the stage of local controversy. It is scarcely half a century since Scotland could claim a respectable place in the catalogue of British literature or science; within the compass of

that short period, however, she has most effectively presented herself in the van of thinking, teaching nations. The garland of warlike pre-eminence which she had worn with pride upon ner hectic brow for nearly nineteen centuries, red reeking with the blood of her foemen, and of her sons and daughters murdered to satisfy the passions born of feudalism, has been cast aside to wither, or to be regarded as an object of inferior interest; and the voice of her genius has suddenly swelled into a symphony of glory, speaking in the holiest strains of poetry, in the deepest tones of Christian philosophy, in the most humanizing expressions of mechanical power, and in the most exalted eloquence of art. If Scotland could present no parallel to the array of great literary names which graces the annals of England at the epoch of the Reformation and Commonwealth, the era of the first French Revolution finds her second to no country in the majesty of her intellectual soul. In Reid, Brown, Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Sir James Mackintosh, she exhibited that philosophical courage and illustrious virtue which were essentially requisite to successfully combat with the subtle scepticisms of Hume. In Burns, she gave to the world a poet as versatile as Shakspeare, and a lyrist as burning as Sappho. Her Scott was the Colossus of history, poetry, and romance; her Jeffrey the Aristarchus of literary criticism, and the Cicero of the forensic tribune; while to the mechanical genius of her James Watt the industrial world bends in grateful homage.

In fifty years the Scottish mind made itself a fame as illustrious as other nations have done in centuries. Bold, enterprising, and indomitable, her sons went abroad to conquer the realms of science, and to bring to her shrine the chaplets of loftiest literary honor. They explored the interiors of regions before the unknown dangers of which a

Columbus or a Gama would have quailed; they tracked the courses of rivers over burn

ing deserts and rocky valleys, where the | Edinburgh. At the university the same simoom sported with the lives of the daring rapidity of comprehension and masculine travellers, and the red-hot sun glared down depth of thought (grown more acute and in wonderment upon their pale faces. They stronger by exercise) which had distinguished followed the sceptic through the arcana of his boyhood's career distinguished his adolesnature, reconciling the cosmogony of revela- cence, and indicated the future destiny of tion with the discoveries of modern science, the man. While scarcely recognized as a and refuting infidelity upon the material young man by those coeval with him, he basis of its self-assumed arguments. Where- was admitted to the intimate fellowship and ever mind could exercise a legitimate majesty, friendship of the then distinguished professor Scotchmen have majestically exercised it. of natural philosophy, Robison; of the faIn every region subject to human dominance mous Playfair, professor of mathematics; they have asserted a special dominion. and the great Dugald Stewart, who filled the chair of moral philosophy. At the age of nineteen he had won from the university the honorary title of M.A., and subsequently he obtained a license to preach the Gospel as a minister of the Scottish Established Church. The genius of the young licentiate had, prior to this period, however, been moving in its own spontaneous course; and had now attained a force which no circumstances were able to counteract, and a direc tion which no prospects of professional preferment could subvert. He had become wedded to the study of the physical sciences, and absorbed in the observation of God's power, and wisdom, and glory, as exemplified in nature. In the year 1801 he devoted himself with singular zeal to the study of optics, and during twelve years continued his beautiful and interesting experiments. The results of these elaborate and long-continued researches were presented to the public, in 1813, in a "Treatise upon New Philosophical Instruments."

To Sir David Brewster incontestibly belongs the greatest name on the roll of scientific Scotchmen. Although only a professor in what may be termed an obscure Scottish university, he has acquired a cosmopolitan reputation and an imperial throne beside the Humboldts and Aragos of Europe. His has been one of the world's great voices, speaking to humanity from the depths of a studious experience, and awakening the echoes of an active and productive futurity by the originality and variety of his discoveries.

There is nothing that excites the wonder of a reflective being so much as the power and influence of genius; it speaks with heart, soul, and mind; and the hearts, souls, and minds of common men are inevitably moved by its power. It struggles through the sternest difficulties, bearing above the reach of fate and the adversities of circumstances the idea which constitutes its life; and it strides on from disappointment to disappointment, and from injustice to injustice, until it attains to sympathy and competent criticism. The progress of Sir David Brewster through life has been (like that of all men of genius) a progress of toil, and disappointment, and injustice; it has also been an illustrious and noble progress, however; illustrious in this, that the greatest savants in the world have distinguished him and honored him; and noble, insomuch that the warmth of his heart and the enthusiasm of his nature have increased with his years.

Sir David Brewster is a native of the town of Jedburgh, in Roxburghshire, where he was born on the 11th of December, 1781. The family of the illustrious savant is distinguished for vigor and originality of mind, and in his earliest years he exhibited these family characteristics. He early acquired the ordinary branches of a Scottish education; and, having shown himself to be possessed of great aptitude for learning, he was sent to complete his studies for the ministry of the Church of Scotland at the University of

In 1807, while prosecuting his optical and other studies, the University of Aberdeen conferred upon the young philosopher the title of LL.D., the highest literary distinction in the gift of any Scottish senatus academicus, and one which is seldom accorded to young men of twenty-six years of age. In 1808 Dr. Brewster was elected a Fellow of the Royol Society of Edinburgh; and in the same year he became editor of the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," whose publication he continued to supervise, and to the pages of which he contributed, till its close in 1830, a period of twenty-two years. The pastimes of men of genius, and the accidents which seem fortuitously to happen to them, have often been the blessings of the world. mysteries of God's providence are so veiled from mortal eyes, and the agencies of his will are often so obscure, that human speculation can seldom elucidate them; and, even if our comprehension does reach them sometimes, our rhetoric is inadequate for their

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adjudged to him the half of the physical prize of 3000 francs, awarded for the two most important scientific discoveries which had been made, during the two previous years, in Europe; and in the same year he invented the kaleidoscope. This instrument, so valuable and important to the printer of cloth (whose inventive powers would, but for its assistance, be immensely inadequate to sustain the variety of patterns demanded by the fashionable appetite), was patented, and ought to have remunerated its inventor; but the commercial spirit of Great Britain prompted its adherents to evade the patent, and to seek their own aggrandizement at the expense of the philosopher. Everybody knew and acknowledged the inventor, and consequently he obtained what is called fame; but, for the tens of thousands of kaleidoscopes which were sold both for use and amusement, he obtained not one penny of remuneration.

In 1819 the indefatigable and indomitable savant obtained the gold and silver Rumford medal from the Royal Society of London, for his discoveries on the polarization of light; and in the same year he established, in conjunction with Professor Jameson, the "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal," which attained to its sixteenth volume.

definite expression. To the Christain the infidelity of a Gibbon or a Hume seems a moral calamity; yet, when we behold the array of genius which seemed to spring from the unknown to meet and controvert them -genius that infused new life into the drooping spirit of virtue and truth-we are constrained to pause and reflect upon the hidden nature of those decrees of Providence which sometimes become thus visible. We are not sufficiently acquainted with the eternal purposes of God to discuss the nature of those circumstances which are generally termed accidental. Their occurrence is accounted trivial, and is truly involved in the mysterious; but the ideas which they suggest, and the results to which they lead, are sometimes of the highest importance to humanity. While engaged, in 1811, in writing an article upon "Burning Instruments" for the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," Dr. Brewster was led to consider the proposal of Buffon to construct a lens of great diameter, out of a single piece of glass, by cutting out the central parts in successive ridges, like the steps of a stair. This proposal Dr. Brewster declared to be practically impossible, but it induced his suggestion for constructing a lens by building it up of several circular segments; and thus forming an apparatus for the illumination of lighthouses, of unequalled power. This beautiful and useful invention was afterwards more fully developed by the learned philosopher in the "Edinburgh Transactions," and is now generally applied to the purpose which he had indicated. In this consists the crowning glory of science, it illumines the world's dark path, leads it from the shades of a general barbarism, and points it towards a brighter and a better day. It is the lighthouse of the future, burning amidst the darkness of mental night and the storms of selfish ignorance, and steadily and constantly performing a circle of disinterested admonition and warning. This splendid invention now pierces with its brilliant beams far into the night, in order to reach the eyes of the wayfaring mariner, to warn him of the hidden rocks that beset his liquid path; and In 1831 Dr. Brewster proposed a meeting little does he think, as he beholds its admon- of all those persons in Britain most distinitory beams and blesses God for this illus-guished in the peculiar paths of research tration of his providence and care, that men which he had himself pursued and adorned; once reckoned the invention in the catalogue and this re-union of savants led to the formaof accidents. In 1815 the Copley medal tion of the "British Association for the Adwas conferred upon Dr. Brewster for one of vancement of Science." his optical discoveries; and shortly after obtaining this distinguished mark of merit, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 1816 the Institute of France

In 1825 the Institute of France elected Dr. Brewster a corresponding member of that distinguished body; and the Royal Academies of Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark, vied with each other in investing him with the highest distinctions which they could confer upon a foreigner. These honorary titles, although they conferred no real lustre on the man to whom they were given, nevertheless opened up to him a correspondence with the greatest 'intellects and celebrities in the world. They brought him nearer to Biot, and Cuvier, and Aragothose great French discoverers of new worlds of science. They introduced him intimately and personally to the many-knowledged Humboldt, and to all the other distinguished men of Germany.

Perhaps the circumstance is attributable to a twist in human nature, perhaps to the catalogue of perverted and debased justice; but still it is a fact, that men are far more

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