principles to practice, and far better examples of the inductive powers may be found, even in the labours of his predecessors, than any which his own writings afford. After having spent five years in this labour for posterity, on the 9th of April, 1626, Bacon died at the age of 66, at the house of Lord Arundel, in Highgate, on his way to London. A week’s acute illness carried him to his grave. He was buried at Old Verulam, and for a long time no “stone told where he lay,” till the affection of an old servant erected a marble monument to the memory of his noble master. His name was well known among the continental nations, and he himself was understood and appreciated by them, to a far greater extent than by his fellow-countrymen. Some allusion to this is found in his will, in which, after having commended his soul to God, and his body to the dust, he proceeds, prophetically, to “bequeath his name and fame to foreign nations, and to his own countrymen after some time be passed over.” The character of Bacon has been held up as an extraordinary anomaly, as containing the extremes of strength and weakness. Pope was pleased to call him “The greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind,” probably for the sake of the powerful contrast presented in the line. That his great strength lay in his intellectual powers there is no doubt, but that his moral power was slight enough for him to deserve the character of “meanest of mankind,” is not to be believed. The wrong he did to Essex is perhaps the strongest stain that remains on his memory. The charge of bribery is not so heinous in him as it appears to be at first sight. He says (and though it be a sophism yet it has some weight,) “that he never sold injustice,” nor did he: his decrees were pronounced without regard to the parties concerned, and were none of them reversed; moreover, judicial bribery was not thought so vicious then as it is now; in France, it was open and daily. Of the twenty-two charges brought against him, five only were really for bribery, that is, while the suit was pending. The rest were presents. He had lived in want for the greater portion of his life, and becoming suddenly rich, and full of various business, he was naturally careless of expenses, and left a great deal more than he ought to have done in the hands of his servants; who lived upon him so extravagantly, that on passing through his hall (when they rose at his presence) he said, “Sit down, my masters, your rise hath been my fall.” There is also every reason to believe that he was induced to suppress his defence by the intrigues of James, and his favourite Buckingham; to whose escape he had the weakness to let himself be made a sacrifice. He has been accused of cringing to this powerful favourite in less important particulars; but his letters are no more than a type of the usual style of an inferior to a superior in the Court in which he lived. He fell upon hard times, first the