displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness. Thy creatures have been my books, but Thy Scriptures much more. I have sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens; but I have found Thee in Thy temples.

"Thousands have been my sins, and ten thousands my transgressions; but Thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart (through Thy grace) hath been an unquenched coal upon Thine altar.

"O Lord, my strength! I have since my youth met with Thee in all my ways, by Thy fatherly compassions, by Thy comfortable chastisements, and by Thy most visible providence. As Thy favours have increased upon me, so have Thy corrections; so as Thou hast been always near me, O Lord! And ever as my worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from Thee have pierced me; and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before Thee. And now, when I thought most of peace and honour, Thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me, according to Thy former loving-kindness, keeping me still in Thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, but as a child. Just are Thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to Thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea? Earth, heavens, and all these are nothing to Thy mercies. Besides Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before Thee, that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of Thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as I ought) to exchangers, where it might have made best profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit. So Ι may truly say, my soul hath been a stranger in the

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course of my pilgrimage. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for my Saviour's sake, and receive me unto Thy bosom, or guide me in Thy ways."

The story of Bacon's death has been already noticed. He caught a severe cold, in consequence of stuffing a fowl with snow, as an experiment with a view to its preservation. The incident occurred as he was riding in his coach on a winter's day between London and Highgate. He immediately became very ill, and was conveyed to the Earl of Arundel's house in the village. There he was put into a bed warm but damp, and there he expired on the 9th of April, 1626, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. The wish expressed in his will was complied with: "For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near St. Alban's; there was my mother buried, and it is the parish church of my mansion house of Gorhambury, and it is the only Christian church within the walls of old Verulam.”1

1 Works, xvi. p. ccccxlvii. Selections from the works of Lord Bacon, with an introductory memoir, form one of the volumes published by the Religious Tract Society, under the general title of Wisdom of our Fathers.

It is unnecessary to refer to the charge of infidelity brought against Lord Bacon. That charge is examined and disposed of in Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, iii. p. 142. Whatever might have been his opinions in early life, there can be no doubt of his sincere religious convictions afterwards.

BAC

RENÉ DESCARTES.

1596-1650.

ACON and Descartes were contemporaries; and for some time the lustre of the first was surpassed by that of the second. Descartes stood at the head of European philosophers in the seventeenth century.

He was a Frenchman, born in 1596, of noble descent, and he possessed intellectual power united to a delicate physical constitution. In the neighbourhood of his father's residence, at La Flêche in Touraine, he studied at a Jesuit college; and at the age of thirteen won the title of "Young Philosopher." His early tastes are said to have been nurtured, if not inspired, by intimacy with a distinguished monk named Marsenne; but soon after attaining manhood, he appears as a soldier taking part in the wars which then desolated Europe. He fought in Holland under Maurice of Nassau; and in Germany under Maximilian of Bavaria. He passed into the service of the Emperor Ferdinand II. ; and it is stated that he was at the siege of Rochelle in an attack on the English fleet. But in camp, as at college, he pursued his studies; and it is related that in Flanders he saw posted on a wall a geometrical challenge, according to the fashion of those times, and that the next day he sent a solution of the problem.

He afterwards travelled into Italy, and on his return determined to devote his life to philosophical inquiries. Selling a portion of his paternal estate, he left his native country for Holland, where he thought he could, with least interruption, follow the bent of his inclinations. When he became involved in controversy through his various writings, and had aroused the displeasure both of Roman Catholic priests and Protestant ministers by some of his speculations, he found Holland as well as France too hot for his residence; therefore he betook himself to Sweden, whither his fame had gone before, and accepted the protection and patronage of Queen Christina, who became his pupil, and took lessons of the philosopher at the hour of five in the morning. Early rising was not one of Descartes' virtues and his efforts to overcome old habits, in a delicate state of health and in a rigorous climate, produced or increased pulmonary disease, which shortened his life, and he expired at Stockholm in 1650. His fame brought with it the penalty of numerous attacks on his opinions, and his early military encounters prefigured battles of another kind in which it was his lot to be engaged.

Descartes was a mathematician. He excelled in a science to which Bacon paid inadequate attention. There has been much dispute as to the originality of some of his views-for plagiarism is one of the offences of which he was accused, and it seems difficult to determine in many branches of learning what he borrowed and what was properly his own; but there can be no doubt that he wrought a great revolution in this department of abstract science. He is considered to have new-modelled the study of algebra, and te

HIS MATHEMATICAL STUDIES.

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have totally superseded the geometry of the ancients. His conceptions of the properties of curve-lines and curve-surfaces, and his views of the constitution of equations, are spoken of as vast improvements, whether entirely original or not; and it is remarked by one who understands the subject, "Admitting, as we do, his claims on this head to be open to dispute, the writings and discoveries of Descartes have laid the foundation for such a change in the general character of mathematical science, as renders it extremely difficult for those who have not given very great attention to the older writers to follow the course of reasoning which they employed."

Descartes devoted his mathematical genius to the study of optics. Here again we come across disputes as to the originality of his discoveries, and it is curious to find him pursuing an anti-Baconian method of investigation; instead of contenting himself with the results of experiment, he undertook to prove his conclusions by direct reasonings. In 1637 he announced in his Dioptrics that he had "solved the mystery of refraction." "He showed that the sine of the angle of incidence, at which the ray enters, has in the same medium a constant ratio to that of the angle at which it is refracted or bent in passing through." A "law of beautiful simplicity as well as extensive usefulness." He also gave an explanation of the rainbow, so far as colour was not concerned, Newton being afterwards the first to solve that part of the problem. Descartes traced the path of the ray, and marked the

1 Knight's Biographical Dictionary, art. "Descartes." 2 Hallam's Introduction to Lit., iv. p. 49.