HIS CHARACTER. 49 delicate humour. And yet he held his own in a Court which Burleigh adorned with his luminous intellect, where a Leicester displayed his splendid pomp, and a Raleigh shone pre-eminent as poet, adventurer, and courtier. I believe that this fame which Sidney-without effort-won, is very creditable to the moral feeling of his age and nation. What his contemporaries saw in him was not the genius of the poet, or the valour of the soldier; but the devotion to duty, and the purity of feeling of the Christian gentleman. "The secret of his fame," says a recent writer, seems to lie in the singular beauty of his life; which has been well-described as 'poetry put into action.'” His single fault appears to have been his impetuosity of temper, which, partly, was constitutional, and which, had he lived to a mature age, we cannot doubt that he would have repressed or conquered. But in refinement of thought and feeling, in generosity of sentiment, in delicacy of taste and soundness of judgment, he appears to have deserved the warm eulogiums which have been lavished upon him. And our young readers may learn a lesson from his career which it is well they should take to heart-that genius, heroism, or wit, is not needful to secure us the esteem and regard of those among whom we act, and speak, and live; but that the world, despite its apparent indifference, is never insensible to the beauty of a Christian life, to the dignity of a virtuous and spotless character. [AUTHORITIES..-Lord Brooke, Memoir of Sir Philip Sidney; Dr. Thomas Zouch, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir Philip Sidney (ed. 1809); T. Wright, Letters of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, &c.; J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands; Lloyd, and H. R. Fox Bourne, Lives of Sir Philip Sidney (1862); Wood, Athena Oxonienses, ed. by Bliss; Arthur Collins, Letters and Memorials of State (1746); Works of Sidney, in Prose and Verse (London 1725).] Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam): PHILOSOPHER AND STATESMAN. A.D. 1561-1626. "O tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen Qui primus potuiste, illustrans commoda vitæ.' "For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next age."-From Lord Bacon's Will. இ Francis Bacon. Afar, upon a sea all unexplored, A gallant vessel rides with venturous prow; Each envious eye has marked its ragged poles, Who carp at what they may not understand Chronological Table. A.D. Bacon born At Trinity College, Visits France-Death of his father Keeps his terms at Gray's Inn-Called to the bar Appointed the Queen's Counsel Extraordinary-Parliamentary lite Appointed Attorney-General 1617, 1618, 1619 1620 1626 Made Lord-Keeper of the Great Seal-Lord-Chancellor, and created Publishes the "Organum"-Accused of bribery, and disgraced Francis Bacon Lord Verulam): PHILOSOPHER AND STATESMAN. CHAPTER I.-HIS EARLY YEARS. th of Francis Bacon-York House-Bacon's Mother-The Lord KeeperWitty Sayings-A Family Picture-Bacon's Precocity-At Trinity CollegeTour in France-His Father's Death-Early Struggles-Keeps his Terms in Gray's Inn-Assiduous study-Called to the Bar-A Member of Parliament -Becomes the Queen's Counsel Extraordinary-A Reformer-Love of Philosophical Studies-Aspirations. RANCIS BACON, the Father of Inductive Philosophy, best known in the history and literature of England as Lord Bacon, was the on of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Queen Elizabeth's trusty ord-Keeper, and Lady Anne Bacon, a woman of surassing worth. He was born on the 22nd of January 1561, at York House, in the Strand-not then the busy traject of trade nd commerce, which a long line of stuccoed houses and littering shops shuts out from the river, but a broad nd cheery expanse of green fields and blooming lanes, Eudded with noble mansions, whose pleasaunces sloped ently to the margin of the "royal towered Thames." |