Bacon, be it said in sorrow, was one of the last of the bench who descended to torturing his victims. He wrote of the unfortunate Peacham, when he refused to answer his questions, "that he had a dumb devil." Yet this man loved at other moments pure pleasures. His love of a garden was real, and deep, and no man understood more fully the heights and depths of the Christian Faith, or the higher flights of redeemed souls. "Prosperity," he wrote, "is the blessing of the Old Testament; Adversity, the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer evidence of God's favour." "Prosperity," he declared, "was not without many fears and distastes, and Adversity not without comforts and hopes. Prosperity doth best discover vice, but Adversity doth best discover virtue." Nobody has ever approached Bacon for his beauty of expression. Shelley wrote of his style, "His language has a sweet, majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect." Such natures as Lord Verulam's are difficult for commonplace mortals to understand, for the head is of a god, and the feet, those of a beast. The young or inexperienced might call such men humbugs, or hypocrites; but, perhaps, the real truth is, that such men possess dual natures. In them is a spirit that knows the light, and seeks it, as the Chancellor swore he would seek the light; but to whom, also, the ways of darkness are not repellent, and who cannot resist the favour of man, and the false glamour of courts. Then I thought of the fair gardens of history. I imagined the splendours of Nonsuch, laid out by bluff Harry, of which men said, "that the palace was encumbered with parks full of deer, and surrounded with delicious gardens and groves, ornamented with trellis works and cabinets of verdure, so that it seemed a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself, to dwell in along with Youth." It was also good to think of John Evelyn in his plantings, and during his long rides. I thought of him journeying in the south of France, along the Mediterranean coast, enjoying the sight there of the vineyards and olives. In fancy I beheld him scenting the orange and citron groves, and stopping to gaze "at the myrtle, pomegranates, and the like sweet plantations," as he passed villa after villa, built, as he said, of glittering free-stone, which, in that clear atmosphere, made him think "of snow dropped from the clouds, amongst the verdure of the ilexes and perennial greens." [Sidenote: ELIZABETH OF YORK'S BOWER]