MARRIAGE-FESTIVITIES.

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nce, that she could be persuaded to favour Bacon's nsions.

d then the marriage-day was named-the roth of 1606. The festivities which marked it have been aphically described by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, that vite our readers to gaze upon the picture :

eathers and lace lighted up the rooms in the Strand e Sir John Pakington, the bride's step-father, had idence]. Cecil* was invited to come over from ury House and taste the feast; but the hunchback would not cross the street. Three of his gentlemen · Walter Cope, Sir Baptist Hicks, and Sir Hugh on-hard drinkers, and men about town, strutted in his stead, flaunting in their swords and plumes; he prodigal bridegroom, sumptuous in his tastes as s genius, clad in a suit of Genoese velvet, purple from to shoe, outbraved them all. The bride was richly -her whole dowry, as her guests observed, seeming e piled on her in cloth of silver and ornaments of

The wedding rite was performed at St. MaryleChapel, two miles from the Strand, among the lanes suburbs winding towards the foot of Hampstead

Who that is blessed with sympathy or poetry ot see how that glad and shining party rode to the church on the sunny 10th of May? how the girls d laugh and Sir John would joke as they wound ugh lanes then white with thorn and the bloom of s? how the bridesmaids scattered rosemary and the msmen struggled for the kiss? Who cannot imagine dinner in the Strand, though Salisbury would not e over to Sir John's lodging to kiss the bride? We Queen Elizabeth's able and crafty minister, created Earl of Salisbury.

know that the wit must have been good, for Bacon was there; we may trust Sir John for the quality of his wine. Alice brought to her husband two hundred and twenty pounds a year, with a further claim, on her mother's. death, of one hundred and forty pounds a year. As Lady Pakington long outlived Bacon, that increase never came into his hands. Two hundred and twenty pounds a year was his wife's whole fortune. What was not spent in lace and satins for her bridal dress he allowed her to invest for her separate use. From his own estate he settled on her five hundred pounds a year."

Such a match cannot assuredly be called, with any justice, what Bacon's calumniators have called it—a mercenary one. But it was not, I fear, a happy marriage; the morning opened auspiciously, with music and sunshine, but as the day grew on it deepened and darkened into cloud and shadow. This, at least, is an inference not unreasonably drawn from the fact that Bacon, in a codicil to his will, revoked all previous bequests to his wife, and left her only her marriage-settlement.

CHAPTER V.-HIS ELEVATION TO THE BENCH.

Bacon's letter to James I.-His Opinion of that Monarch-Receives the honour of Knighthood-Increasing Parliamentary Reputation-Solicitor-GeneralAttorney-General-The prosecution of Edmond Peachem-Rise of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham-Bacon's good Counsel-Becomes Lord-ChancellorHis regulations.

ON the accession of James I. to the throne (A.D. 1603), Bacon addressed himself to the new sovereign and the new sovereign's favourites, with the view of discovering what share might be his of the royal patronage.

CHARACTER OF JAMES I.

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With sly humour he adapted the tone of his letter to James's pedant taste: "It is observed," he began, "by some upon a place in the Canticles, Ego sum flos campi et lilium convallium,* that, a dispari, it is not said, Ego sum flos horti et lilium montium,+ because the majesty of that person is not enclosed for a few, nor appropriated to the great. And therefore, most high and mighty king, my most dear and dread sovereign lord, I think there is no subject of your Majesty's which loveth this island, and is not hollow and unworthy, whose heart is not set on fire not only to bring you peace-offerings to make you propitious, but to sacrifice himself a burnt-offering or holocaust to your Majesty's service."

From the exaggerated flavour of his phraseology, it is evident that Bacon had framed no very high estimate of his royal master's capacity. In a confidential letter to the Earl of Northumberland, he writes: "His speech is swift and cursory, and in the full dialect of his country; in speech of business, short; in speech of discourse, large. He affecteth popularity by gracing such as he hath heard to be popular, and not by any fashions of his own. is thought somewhat general in his favours, and his virtue of access is rather because he is much abroad and in press than that he giveth easy audience."

He

Bacon's suit to the king was promoted by Cecil, who required the aid of his great powers in the House of Commons; and on the 23d of July, the day of the coronation of Elizabeth's successor, he received the dignity of knighthood. Soon afterwards, in order to silence effectually the calumnious tongues of his bitter enemies, he published

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* I am the flower of the field, and the lily of the valley.

† I am the flower of the garden, and the lily of the mountain.

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his remarkable "Apology of Sir Francis Bacon in certain imputations concerning the late Earl of Essex," a noble piece of self-vindication, which, as it was certainly accepted by his contemporaries, should hardly be denied by posterity.

Meanwhile, in the House of Commons, Bacon's reputation rapidly increased, and his influence grew with it. He specially distinguished himself by his eloquent support of a wise and favourite measure of the king's—the union of England and Scotland; while with "thoughts that breathed and words that burned" he eagerly exposed the defects which had crept into every department of the administration. Both James and his minister Cecil saw that such a man could no longer be neglected. His judgment, foresight, and eloquence were needful for the service of the state; and thus, after many a weary disappointment, Bacon at length attained the elevation to which he was entitled by pre-eminent fitness, and in 1607 became Solicitor-General. A greater triumph, however, had preceded this. It was in 1605 that his treatise on the "Advancement of Learning" appeared, and the glorious language wherein his noble conceptions were embodied, at once, in all its majesty of music, spread over astonished Europe.

Bacon was Solicitor-General for six years. His practice had largely increased, and his official duties were necessarily severe, but he found time in this period to enrich the literature of England with the logic of his

Cogitata et Visa," and the fancy of his "De Sapientiâ Veterum." He also busied himself in support of the adventurous companies at whose risk Virginia and Newfoundland were colonized. He was appointed Attorney

A NEW FAVOURITE AT COURT.

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General in 1613, when Hobart was promoted to the bench as Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and received a further honour in his election by the members of Cambridge University as their representative. His attorneyship was distinguished by the prosecution of Edmond Peachem, "one of the most despicable wretches who ever brought shame and trouble on the Church," yet one whom Bacon's hostile biographers have thought fit to represent as a martyr and a victim, tortured and racked almost to the death by the vindictive Attorney-General. This man was a scribbler of defamatory libels and treasonable absurdities, who had wickedly endeavoured to involve in ruin certain of his oldest and kindest patrons -the friends of Bacon-and well deserved a severe retribution. Not the less must we regret that he was subjected to the torture by order of the commissioners appointed to inquire into his guilt, and that among these commissioners should have sat the author of the "Instauratio." And yet, are we fully justified in requiring that in everything-in legal practice, and official regimen, as well as in philosophical analysis—he should have been before his age?

It was about this time that a star of surpassing brilliancy rose above the horizon of the Court-George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, the handsomest, ablest, most brilliant and most generous of all the favourites of the weak James. Between him and Bacon there soon sprang up a cordial alliance, and the grave philosopher, the worn statesman, the experienced lawyer, dedicated to this glittering and giddy youth a composition of admirable merit and noble eloquence, entitled "Advice to Sir George Villiers," indicating the whole course of duty at