Indeed his protestations of undying friendship to all of high station, whom he addresses unctuously, are French in their amplitude, and French, too, in their vanities. He presses sharply always toward the great end of self-advancement--whether by flatteries, or cajolement, or direct entreaty. He believed in the survival of the fittest; and that the fittest should struggle to make the survival good--no matter what weak ones, or timid ones, or confiding ones, or emotional ones should go to the wall, or the bottom, in the struggle. His flatteries, I think, never touched the Queen, though he tried them often and gave a lurid color to his flatteries. She admired his parts as a young man; she had honored his father; she accepted his services with thanks--even the dreadful services which he rendered in demonstrating the treason of the gallant and generous, but headstrong Earl of Essex. He never came into full possession of royal confidences, however, until James I. came to the throne: by him he was knighted, by him made Lord Chancellor, by him elevated to the peerage; and it was under him that he was brought to trial for receiving bribes--was convicted, despoiled of his judicial robes, went to prison--though it might be only for a day--and thereafter into that retirement, at once shameful and honorable, where he put the last touches to those broad teachings of “Philosophy,” which the world will always cherish and revere: not the first nor the last instance in which great and fatal weaknesses have been united to great power and great accomplishment. But lest you may think too hardly of this eminent man, a qualifying word must be said of that stain upon him--of receiving bribes: it was no uncommon thing for high judicial personages to take gifts; no uncommon thing for all high officers of the Government--nay, for the Government itself, as typified in its supreme head. And, strange as it may seem, Bacon’s sense of justice does not appear to have been swayed by the gifts he took. Spedding has demonstrated, I think, that no judgment he rendered was ever reversed by subsequent and farther hearing.[98] He was not in the ordinary sense a money-lover; but he did love the importance and consideration which money gave, yet was always in straits; and those unwise receivings of his went to supply the shortcomings in a very extravagant and disorderly home-life. His servants plundered him; his tradespeople fleeced him; nor do I think that the mistress of the Chancellor’s household was either very wary or very winning. Almost the only time there is mention of her in his letters occurs previous to his marriage (which did not take place till he was well in middle age), and then only as “the daughter of an alderman who will bring a good dot” with her. His mother-in-law, too, appears to have been of the stage sort of mother-in-law, whom he addresses (by letter) in this fashion:--