had, under Henry the Eighth, revolutionized the uni versities; but subsequent religious, political and social changes had checked progress, and stagnation was the substitute for the enthusiasm of John Colet, Erasmus, and his patron, Archbishop Warham.

A young mind of extraordinary originality and curiosity crossed the threshold of Trinity College, and was required to don the intellectual straight-jacket of the order which he joined. What they could teach he mastered, but he despised their methods, and unjustly identified their great master, Aristotle, with their pedantic vanities and objectless labors. The impressions he then received he subsequently dwelt upon with sharp criticism, referring to his masters and fellows

as

"Men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their dictator. And, knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." *

Translation from his father's house, from conversation with a mother who employed her learning and gifts in the sharp controversies, the living issues. of the day, exchanging the society of men dealing with the stern. realities, and working for the glorious possibilities, of Elizabeth's reign, for the society of pedantic quibblers, invited contrasts, awakened reflections, and, in the end, inspired him to become the apostle of philosophic

* Contentious Learning,― Ad. of Learning.

and philanthropic truth. All of his biographers agree that, as a boy at the university, Bacon contemplated the revolution which he afterwards initiated.

In his sixteenth year he left Cambridge without regret, and accompanied Sir Amias Paulet, the English ambassador, to France. His father regarded the opportunity as favorable for introducing his son into the mysteries of diplomacy and state-craft. The Queen lied at home, and her ministers lied abroad, for the good of the country; so that the school was a good one for the disciple in one sense, although probably a bad one in another. It is likely that Bacon's moral nature received an unfavorable bias from this early entrance into diplomacy. He performed no service other than bearing a dispatch to England, it is true; but it is probable that his thirst for office was then awakened, and his contemplation of the devious ways of the diplomats familiarized him with the doctrine of any means to attain an end.

His stay in the country of Montaigne doubtless suggested his "Essays." His treatises on the state of Europe, and on cipher-writing, were subsequent fruits of his pen. His elegant and charming manners, and brilliant conversation, may be credited, in part, to his residence among a people whose national mission seems to be that of polishing the universe.

After an absence of about two years, he was recalled by the sudden death of Sir Nicholas, and returned to a fatherless home and friendless court.

Lawyer-like, the Lord Keeper was more prompt in drafting other people's wills than his own, so he died intestate. The estate he had intended to purchase for Francis was never bought; and the father, who had

provided for the sons by his first marriage, and even for Bacon's own brother, neglected to secure anything to his favorite child, and left him to confront comparative poverty on the threshold of manhood.

Possessing rare gifts, which had received flattering recognition and encouragement, reared in ease, and assured of competency, Bacon had, previous to his father's death, never seriously contemplated other than scholarly and philosophical pursuits, and political employment, as the road to honors and fame, rather than livelihood. But now, in his own words, he was constrained to "think how to live, instead of living only to think." And his first move seems to have been an application, through his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, to the Queen for preferment at court. An answer appears to have been given which encouraged hope for awhile; but whether his confidence in his uncle's sincerity wavered, or he thought voluntary application to the study of the legal profession would evidence his alacrity and ability for self-denying industry, and favorably impress both Queen and minister, does not appear. However, he became a student at Gray's Inn, Basil Montague and Lord Campbell say, reluctantly; but Mr. Spedding tells us that "his intention was to study the common law as his profession." In a letter to Lord Burghley, from Gray's Inn, September 16th, 1580, Bacon renewed his appeal to his uncle:

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My letter hath no further errand but to commend unto your lordship the remembrance of my suit, which then I moved unto you; whereof it also pleased your lordship to give me a good hearing, so far forth as to promise to tender it unto Her Majesty, and withal to add, in the behalf of it, that which I may better deliver by letter than by speech,

which is, that although it must be confessed that the request is rare and unaccustomed, yet if it be observed how few there be which fall in with the study of the common laws, either being well left or friended, or at their own free election, or forsaking likely success in other studies of more delight, and no less preferment, or setting hand thereunto early, without waste of years: upon such survey made, it may be my case may not seem ordinary, no more my suit, and so more beseeming unto it."

Whether he meant to express to his uncle his distaste for the profession of the law, or to exhibit himself boldly entering upon its study to prepare himself for employment in the Queen's service, is, as far as light can be obtained from his letter, left to conjecture; but his subsequent career seems to afford conclusive proof that he had neither an ambition nor the fitness to become a common-law practioner.

This early correspondence, urging the Lord Treasurer to use his influence with the Queen, and urging Lady Burghley to use her influence with the Lord Treasurer, in his behalf, exhibits him, for the first time, in the rôle of a place-hunter. It also indicates, by its unsuccessful issue, the reluctance on the part of his powerful relative to afford him any assistance in the direction of preferment under the crown.

Although Bacon had fixed his eye on a place at court, his disappointment did not prevent him from bending to the oar of uncongenial labor. When we reflect on his vast attainments, we must credit him with diligence in every undertaking. Close application to year-book, report, and the few text-books then extant, relieved by occasional excursion into the pleasant fields of philosophy, occupied the period embraced between

the years 1580 and 1584, when he took his seat for Melcombe in the House of Commons. This parliament is distinguished for the opposition which the Lower House displayed to the Queen on the question of church government. The Act of Uniformity and plots against the Queen's life made all its members Protestants; the intense anti-protestantism of the continent made a majority of its members sympathizers with the Non-conformists.

"Puritanism," says the historian Green, "was becoming the creed of every earnest Protestant throughout the realm; and the demand for a further advance towards the Calvinistic system, and a more open breach with Catholicism which was embodied in the suppression of the 'superstitious usages,' became stronger than ever. But Elizabeth was firm, as of old, to make no advance. Greatly as the Protestants had grown, she knew they were still a minority in the realm. If the hotter Catholics were fast decreasing, they remained a large and important body. But the mass

of the nation was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It had lost its faith in the Papacy. It was slowly drifting to a new faith in the Bible. But it still clung obstinately to the past; it still recoiled from violent change; its temper was religious rather than theological, and it shrank from the fanaticism of Geneva as it shrank from the fanaticism of Rome. It was a proof of Elizabeth's genius, that, alone, among her councillors, she understood this drift of opinion, and withstood measures which would have startled the mass of Englishmen into a new resistance."

Through the Ecclesiastical Commission and Whitgift she repressed Puritanism. She scotched the snake, but did not kill it. She postponed English reformation to a time when its success would assure the preserva