not desert his post; secondly, that he make the most diligent use of all remedies appropriate to his political distemper.

It is not unusual for afflicted Officials, sometimes from pride, sometimes from fear, and sometimes from an ostentation of humility, to withdraw from the discharge of their public functions, and even to tender their resignations. Solomon, with good cause, disapproves of this method of cure ; for, in the first place, it operates to publish the disgrace—thus encouraging enemies and disheartening friends; secondly, the wrath which might otherwise have subsided of its own accord, becomes more seated, and inclines to complete the ruin it has begun; and finally, such withdrawal savors of resentment and disloyalty, and adds the mischief of suspicion to the mischief of hate. The proper remedies are such as these; First, to guard, above all things, against showing, whether from dullness or pride, too little sensibility under the affliction ; let the countenance be schooled not to a sulky sadness, but to a grave and judicious melancholy; repress any accustomed vivacity in the transaction of business, and get some friend to draw reasonable

; attention to the depth of your distress. Secondly, keep at a cautious distance from anything that may rub the old sore, or lead the great offended to lash you in the presence of others; thirdly, take every occasion to be useful, both by way of displaying your anxiety to atone for the fault, and of suggesting how excellent a servant will be lost by your dismissal. Fourthly, shift the blame sagaciously on to some one else's shoulders ; or insinuate that your intentions, at least, were good; or divert attention to the maliciousness of those who played the informer and exaggerated the fault; and finally, keep your eyes wide open, and watch the progress of the cure.

These were excellent studies for a courtier. With such meditations in the closet, we need not wonder at the practice of the life. There the broad comment makes the text too plain. Abeunt studia in mores, must be eminently true of the serious meditation of the Scriptures; and that this was the character of Bacon's study appears everywhere in his writings. “Thy creatures have been my books,” he exclaims, in that most affecting prayer which breathes the very soul of penitence, “but thy Scriptures much

I have sought Thee in the courts, the fields, and the gardens; but I have found Thee in thy temples.” This very reverence for Scripture ministered to Bacon's degradation. The light that led astray, was light from heaven. His naturally timid and servile temper found encouragement in the cautious and deferential policy recommended to the servants of kings. To exalt the royal prerogative, to study the royal pleasure, to pacify by the humblest protestations the royal indignation, seemed piety as well as prudence. Servility to princes was obedience to God.

It is a question of great interest how far it is to be expected that

more.

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true piety will change the original elements of a man's character.
Since there is none righteous, no, not one, the tempers of all need
to undergo a radical change. The apostasy, in some of its develop-
ments, is found in every bosom-

Avarice, envy, pride,
Three fatal sparks have set the hearts of all

On fire.
Every congregation is but a synod of the vices and weaknesses of
our nature, where depravity in its more imposing or its more abject
forms, comes in half-subdued or half-masked, to sit in the pulpit
and the pews. The Gospel comes in its power to persons of very
opposite moral qualities—to one man of a high-toned, generous,
and self-respecting spirit; to another whom nature and education
have made cautious, calculating and mean. A genuine conversion
changes the relations of each of them to God. It abates the
proud, unbending impenitence of the one-the slavish fear and
hate of the other. It begins to approximate the two characters,
from their opposite poles, towards a common centre. But though,
as respects the attitude of their hearts towards God, old things
have passed away, yet the men remain characteristically as they
were before. The grace of God has taught one of them humility;
but it has not extinguished the customary loftiness of his senti-
ments and spirit. He remains as a Christian, 'a man of high,
generous, sensitive feelings; and the sin that easily besets him all
his life is an inclination to self-reliance and pride. It has inspired
the other with a noble ambition, but it has not elevated him into a
hero; he remains what long habit has made him, a man of cau-
tious and sordid mind. No observing man will entertain the least
doubt that there are persons of genuine piety who, from infelicities
of nature and education, will for ever remain narrow-minded, cold-
hearted and abject. The most candid and charitable reader, we
venture to say, has cases in his view, where a piety which he dare
not question is united to a natural temper, the exhibitions of which
stumble and distress him.

This line of remark, it may be said, is betraying Christianity for the sake of an individual. You do well to show that a man may be of base and abject temper, and a very good Christian notwithstanding. But what greater difficulty, we ask, is there in this case, than in that of the opposite vices? No one will think it dishonoring to the Gospel, to admit the union of piety with the less glaring and offensive developments of pride; with fastidiousness of taste; with a certain social exclusiveness; with a high and sensitive honor; or with the love of unnecessary expensiveness in dress and equipage. Yet these are, at least, as far removed from the Christian temper, as vices towards which we are far less tolerant. God hates pride, we may believe, as much as baseness.

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The latter is not farther removed from Christian humility, than the former is from an allowable Christian decorum. Nay, it bears a resemblance to those virtues which are everywhere insisted on in the Gospel, as of fundamental necessity; without which we cannot enter the kingdom of God; while the former, in all its shapes and modifications, is everywhere resisted, assailed, and trampled on as the deadliest sin of man, and the condemnation of the devil. It is only through that false medium which pride has generated that we look with less disgust on rampant than on reptile vices.

We must not forget, in our judgment of Bacon, the background of brilliant qualities, against which his faults are relieved. He appears the meanest, chiefly because he was the brightest of mankind. It is

As darkly painted on that crimson sky, that his selfishness and timidity stand out with such shocking distinctness. Other men, of inferior gifts, could be signally imperfect, and their faults fail to divert attention from their excellences. There are spots on Mars, as well as on Hyperion. But the dead fly is offensive in proportion to the preciousness of the ointment. The flaw which passes unnoticed on a crystal, ruins a diamond. Similiter in viris singulari virtute præditis, minima quæque vitia statim in oculos et sermones hominum incurrunt, et censura perstringuntur graviori ; quæ in hominibus mediocribus, aut omnino laterent, aut veniam facile impetrarent. Erasmus could be selfish, timeserving, and false to his convictions of truth; but these things scarce awaken any positive aversion towards one who so pleasantly confesses his own weakness, and makes us laugh so heartily at that of others. Cranmer's spots seldom attract attention on the mild neutral tint of his character. We willingly forget that Addison was ever jealous, vindictive, or bibulous. Few persons feel their admiration of Sir Thomas More lessened at recollecting, that he could apply his own arm to the lever which was racking asunder the limbs of a beautiful and accomplished heretic. Even Bacon's faults might have been buried with his bones, had not the immortal malice of the satirist made the evil that he did live after him. There are features in natural scenery and in moral character, which attract no attention until some sharpeyed and officious critic points them out. “Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in shape of a camel ?” Did you never observe that singular obliquity in character ? Few persons make an original discovery of the couchant lion at the Cape, or even of the expressive features of the man in the moon; but once get the eye fixed on them, and the recognition is ever after unavoidable. And so Pope's couplet stands like an everlasting finger-post, directing the looks of generation after generation, to the base and shameful parts of Bacon's character.

We are now prepared to remark, that Lord Bacon's faults, great as they were, were not such as to be inconsistent with the idea of a genuine piety. He is chargeable with no profaneness, irreve

, rence, or bodily excess; vices from which he was far removed. He practised no dishonesty or fraud. He was not unmerciful or oppressive. He was not covetous. But he indulged, according to the fashion of the age, in excessive adulation of his sovereign. When he could not save his friend and benefactor, he had not heroism enough to drown with him. He struggled to the surface; and to aid his rise, even planted his feet on the breast of the sinking suicide,

It was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Cæsar answered it. Absorbed in philosophy and politics, he paid no attention to domestic economy, and suffered a lavish expenditure, which dug a pit for his fall." To repair his wasted fortunes, he accepted gifts, as other chancellors had done before him, supposing them to be only freewill offerings, after judgment rendered. Only one or two of them seem to have been received, in any sense, pendente lite ; and like his predecessors, he might have passed unscourged, had he not happened to fall on evil days. He exercised his functions at a time when enormous abuses had roused the spirit of the Commons, and rendered redress and a victim unavoidable. His misfortune was to be in the way when the ruin fell. Justice could not strike at the real authors of the abuses under which the nation groaned, James and his favorite. It made an example, the highest it could reach, of one by whose corruption no man was wronged in property or in person. The vulture rapacity of Buckingham and his creatures raised the storm ;—the bolt fell on the head of Bacon.

Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbis. All this, to be sure, is saying but little. Multitudes of men have no vices inconsistent with the idea of piety, who yet are not pious. Bacon, certainly, might have been very superior, as he was, in the tone of his morals, and the exhibition of Christian feeling, to most men about courts, and yet have come short of the kingdom of heaven. There is a positive side to the question, however, as well as a negative. If the great man whose character we are contemplating, ever found peace in believing, it was only through the same course of experience with all other sinners : through a genuine conviction of guilt, a hearty repentance, and an evangelical faith. At what period in his life he may have been the subject of this experience, we cannot tell. If before his fall, the cares of this world and the lusts of other things, had perhaps choked the word, and rendered it unfruitful; and then his affliction came upon him as a part of that Fatherly correction secured for the people of God when they forsake His law. If after his fall, it was the blessed fruit of mortified ambition; the bitter medicine that brought healing to the soul; the grievous chastisement that wrought the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

We incline to the latter opinion. Bacon was a man of contemplative and serious mind; conversant with the Scriptures and with religious truth; and accustomed, according to the style of that age, to the use of a sort of religious dialect. But there is nothing remaining of a probable date earlier than his degradation, that indicates deep religious feeling. If God wrought out His designs of mercy toward that great soul which He had endowed with such rare gifts, by humiliating providences, prostrating his pride, and bringing him into the dust, it is only what Eternity will reveal, as the course by which he has brought many other sons to glory. “ God, before his Son that bringeth mercy, sent his servant, the trumpeter of repentance, to level every high hill, to prepare the way before him, making it smooth and straight. Christ never comes before His way-maker hath laid even the heart with sorrow and repentance. Not only knowledge, but also every other gift which we call the gift of fortune, have power to puff up earth. Afflictions only level these mole-hills of pride, plough the heart, and make it fit for wisdom to sow her seed, and for grace to bring forth her increase. Happy is that man, therefore, that is thus wounded, to be cured; thus broken, to be made straight.")*

Especially towards the wise, mighty, and noble, who have been called,-men whose chief temptation and danger lay in their prosperity and self-confidence, it is probable this has been the common method of grace. It was needful to show that their prosperity was but a reed, and their confidence a dream, before they could be brought to God, as their only satisfying portion. Multitudes in Heaven, and on the way to Heaven, have blessed the kind severity that stripped them of their earthly comforts, and blasted their cherished hopes,

" That forced their conscience to a stand,

And brought their wand'ring souls to God.” The theological remains, so called, of Lord Bacon, mostly bear internal evidence of being the work of his last years. The excep. tions are the tracts on Church Controversies, and Pacification of the Church, which were offered to King James in the opening of his reign. Upon these we shall not remark, our object being to illustrate, not the opinions, but the character of the author. They breathe a spirit of moderation and charity, kindred to that of the best British reformers. The undervaluing of mere ceremonies, the tenderness toward those calling for reformation,” and towards churches under a different regimen, and the zeal for