and by suddenly lighting up within the very region of the Unchangeable and Incorruptible, and presently extinguishing, a new fixed star as bright as Jupiter-(the new star in Cassiopeia shone with full lustre on Bacon's freshmanship)-to be protesting by signs and wonders against the cardinal doctrine of the Aristotelian philosophy. It was then that a thought struck him, the date of which deserves to be recorded, not for anything extraordinary in the thought itself, which had probably occurred to others before him, but for its influence upon his after-life. If our study of nature be thus barren, he thought, our method of study must be wrong: might not a better method be found? The suggestion was simple and obvious. The singularity was in the way he took hold of it. With most men such a thought would have come and gone in a passing regret; a few might have matured it into a wish; some into a vague project; one or two might perhaps have followed it out so far as to attain a distinct conception of the better method, and hazard a distant indication of the direction in which it lay. But in him the gift of seeing in prophetic vision what might be and ought to be was united with the practical talent of devising means and handling minute details. He could at once imagine like a poet and execute like a clerk of the works. Upon the conviction This may be done, followed at once the question How may it be done? Upon that question answered, followed the resolution to try and do it.

Of the degrees by which the suggestion ripened into a project, the project into an undertaking, and the undertaking unfolded itself into distinct proportions and the full grandeur of its total dimensions, I can say nothing. But that the thought first occurred to him during his residence at Cambridge, therefore before he had completed his fifteenth year, we know upon the best authority-his own statement to Dr. Rawley. I believe it ought to be regarded as the most important event of his life; the event which had a greater influence than any other upon his character and future course. From that moment there was awakened within his breast the appetite which cannot be satiated, and the passion which cannot commit excess. From that moment he had a vocation which employed and stimulated all the energies of his mind, gave a value to every vacant interval of time, an interest and significance to every random thought and casual accession of knowledge; an object to live for as wide as humanity, as immortal as the human race; an idea to live in vast and lofty enough to fill the soul for ever with religious and heroic aspirations. From that moment, though still subject to interruptions, disappointments, errors, and regrets, he could never be without either work or hope or consolation.

So much with regard to the condition of his mind at this period we may I think reasonably assume, without trespassing upon the province of the novelist. Such a mind as we know from after experience that Bacon possessed, could not have grown up among such circumstances without receiving impressions and impulses of this kind. He could not have been bred under such a mother without imbibing some portion of her zeal in the cause of the reformed religion; he could not have been educated in the house of such a father, surrounded by such a court, in the middle of such agitations, without feeling loyal aspirations for the cause of his Queen and country; he could not have entertained the idea that the fortunes of the human race might by a better application of human industry be redeemed and put into a course of continual improvement, without conceiving an eager desire to see the process begun.

Assuming then that a deep interest in these three great causes— the cause of reformed religion, of his native country, of the humar race through all their generations-was thus early implanted in that vigorous and virgin soil, we must leave it to struggle up as it may, according to the accidents of time and weather. Many a bad season it will meet with; many a noble promise will be broken.

It is the universal error of hope and youth to overlook impediments and embrace more than can be accomplished, and to the latter years of all great undertakings is left the melancholy task of selecting from among many cherished purposes those which with least injury to the whole design may be abandoned. But though in the history of society an abandoned purpose may rightly go for nothing, it is not so in the history of a man. A man's intentions, so long as they deserve the name of intentions, mix with his views, affect his actions, and are so much a part of himself that unless we take them into the account we can never understand the real conditions of the problem which his life presents to him for solution. Of Bacon's life at any rate I am persuaded that no man will ever form a correct idea, unless he bear in mind that from very early youth his heart was divided between these three objects, distinct but not discordant; and that though the last and in our eyes the greatest was his favourite and his own, the other two never lost their hold upon his affections. Not until he felt his years huddling and hurrying to their close did he consent to abandon the hope of doing something for them all; nor indeed is it easy to find any period of his life in which some fortunate turn of afffairs might not have enabled him to fulfil it.

But these perplexing necessities are as yet far away, beyond the horizon. For the present we must picture him as in the season of victorious and all-embracing hope, dreaming on things to come, and rehearsing his life to himself in that imaginary theatre where all things go right; for such was his case when-a hopeful, sensitive, bashful, amiable boy, wise and well-informed for his age, and glowing with noble aspirations-he put forth into the world with happy auspices in his sixteenth year.

2.

Sir Nicholas Bacon could not be unaware of his favourite son's rare qualifications for civil employment. He knew, by seventeen years' experience of Elizabeth's arduous, anxious, and prosperous government, how deeply the State stood in need of the best abilities it could command. Perhaps he regretted to see such a mind turning its energies to objects which were really of less immediate urgency, and probably seemed to him of less ultimate importance (for in the eyes of an old privy councillor the King of Spain might well appear to be a more dangerous enemy of the human race than Aristotle); and being deeply impressed with the perilous condition in which England and therefore the Protestant religion--the religion, as he would have called it-then stood, wished to draw him away from the pursuit of shadows by placing him face to face with the realities of life. At that moment a favourable opportunity presented itself. If England showed an example of the splendid effects of successful government dealing with difficult times, France showed an example not less striking of the fatal results of misgovernment, in circumstances not otherwise much unlike. Both countries possessed great natural advantages in both the materials of trouble abounded, arising in both from the same cause-divisions in religion. Yet in England all functions of the State proceeded in healthy, vigorous, and united action, while in France everything was in misery and disorder," the offices of justice sold, the treasury wasted, the people polled, the country destroyed;" and all through a few years of corrupt, violent, or feeble administration. Just then Sir Amias Paulet was going out as ambassador to France, and Sir Nicholas resolved that his son, who had seen at home the efficacy of a good regimen in keeping the body politic sound, should go with him, and see the symptoms of disease produced in a similar subject by a bad one.

Sir Amias landed at Calais on the 25th of September, 1576, and succeeded Dr. Dale as ambassador in France in the following Feb

1 Notes on the Present State of Christendom, printed in the next chapter.

ruary. With the particulars of his employment we need not trouble ourselves, as it is not probable that Francis, though he is said to have been once sent home with a message to the Queen,2 had much to do with them. But the general aspect of affairs on the continent of Europe would naturally engage the attention of an intelligent boy, and the house of the English ambassador in France would give him the best opportunities of understanding the movements of the different powers, and their bearing upon the interests of his own country. The period of his residence there was full of great matters. It included the short, aspiring, and dangerous career of Don John of Austria; his "perpetual edict of peace" pretended and broken; his victory at Gemblours; his practices by secret help from the Pope to marry the Queen of Scots and invade England; his death "in no ill season.' It included the treaty of mutual assistance between England and the states of Holland; the ineffectual effort made by England, France, and Austria to compose the troubles of the Netherlands; the beginning and the end of the sixth civil war in France; the opening of the negotiation for a marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou; the preparation and accidental diversion of a design for invading Ireland, under Sebastian King of Portugal and Thomas Stukley the English fugitive, supported by the Pope and the King of Spain. And in the middle of these alarms and great disturbances, the business of the mission to which he was attached took him in the wake of the Court through several of the French provinces, -from Paris to Blois, from Blois to Tours, from Tours to Poitiers, where in the autumn of 1577 he resided for three months. So that he had excellent opportunities of studying foreign policy. Of the manner in which he spent his time however we have no information, except what we may gather from a few casual allusions dropped by himself in his later life, which only show that his observation was active and his memory retentive; and something, perhaps, from the inscription on a miniature painted by Hilliard in 1578, which indicates the impression made by his conversation upon those who heard it. There may be seen his face as it was in his eighteenth year, and round it may be read the significant words-the natural ejaculation, we may presume, of the artist's own emotion-Si tabula daretur digna, animum mallem: if one could but paint his mind!

He was still at Paris, and was already wishing to be at home again, when about the 17th February, 1578-9, from one of those vague presentiments of evil which make no impression upon the waking judgment but so often govern the dream, he dreamed that 2 Rawley Life, vol. i. p. 4.

1 Burghley's Diary: Murdin, pp. 778, 779.

3 See his own statement to Mr. Faunt, chap. ii. § 4.

his father's house in the country was plastered all over with black mortar. And certain it was that about that time his father, having accidentally fallen asleep at an open window during the great thaw which followed a great snow,2 was seized with a sudden and fatal illness of which he died in a few days. It was a critical conjuncture for Francis. The question whether he was to be an independent or a dependent man,- —a man who might "live to study," or a man who must "study to live,"—was then trembling in the balance; and this accident turned the scale against him. Sir Nicholas, having provided for the rest of his sons, had at that time (so Dr. Rawley was informed) laid by a considerable sum of money, which he meant to employ in purchasing an estate for Francis. His sudden death prevented the purchase, and left Francis with only a fifth part of the fortune intended for him. An accident of great moment; which perplexed the problem of his life by a new and most inconvenient condition. Like a general who after laying out the design of his campaign suddenly finds his commissariat fail, he must now readjust his plans, combining with them some kind of employment which will pay. There was no help for it however, and the less time lost the better. The law was his most obvious and on many accounts his most promising resource; and being already an ancient of Gray's Inn, he sate down at once to make himself a working lawyer. If the accidents should prove favourable, he might even find an advantage in it; if not, he would at least find a subsistence. He left Paris for England on the 20th of March, 1578-9, bearing a despatch from Sir Amias Paulet to the Queen, in which he was mentioned as of great hope, endued with many good and singular parts," and one who, “if God gave him life, would prove a very able and sufficient subject to do her Highness good and acceptable service."4 Soon after (probably in Trinity Term, but I cannot be sure) he commenced his regular career as a student at law; and for the next year, during which we have no further news of him, we may suppose him to be sufficiently occupied with his new studies; as wishing to push himself on with all speed, that he may be the sooner ripe for any worthier or more congenial employment that may offer. And this brings us up to the date of his first letter.

'See Sylva Sylvarum, vol. ii. p. 666. 2 See Apophthegms, vol. vii. p. 183. 3 He had also been admitted during his absence "of the grand company." See Book of Orders, p. 59, under date 21st Nov. 19 Eliz.: "It is further ordered that all his [Sir Nicholas Bacon's] sons, now admitted of the house, viz. Nicholas, Nathaniel, Edward, Anthony, and Francis, shall be of the grand company, and not to be bound to any vacations."

State Paper Office: French Correspondence.