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200 in the same direction round to the opposite table. A player is not obliged to enter all his men before he moves any; and he can take up blots on entering, although he has some of his men, which have never been entered, off the board. But, while a player has a man up, he must enter it before entering any more, or moving any of those already entered. If he cannot enter the man that is up, he loses the benefit of the throw.

A player who throws doublets must move not only the number thrown, but also doublets of the number corresponding to the opposite side of the dice; thus, if he throws sixes, he must first enter or move the sixes, as the case may be, and then aces, and he also has another throw. If he throws doublets a second time, he moves according to the rule already given, and throws again, and so on. The privilege is sometimes restricted by not allowing this advantage to the first doublets thrown by each player. It is sometimes extended by allowing the thrower of deuce, ace, to choose any doublets he likes on the opposite sides of the dice, and to throw again. The restriction with regard to the first doublets thrown does not apply to deuce, ace, nor does throwing it remove the restriction with regard to first doublets.

A player must first be able to complete the doublets thrown. If the cannot move the whole throw, he cannot take the corresponding doublets, and he is not allowed another throw if he cannot move all the points to which he is entitled. In other respects the game is similar to ordinary backgammon. The chief object in the game is for the player who has his men in advance to secure as many successive points as possible, so that his adversary may be unable to pass or hit the forward men.  BACKHUYSEN,, an eminent painter of the Dutch school, was born at Embden, in Hanover, in 1631, and died in 1709. He was brought up as a merchant at Amsterdam, but early discovered so strong a genius for painting that he relinquished business and devoted himself to art. He studied first under Everdingen and then under Dubbels, two eminent masters of the time, and soon became celebrated for his sea pieces. He was an ardent student of nature, and frequently exposed himself on the sea in an open boat in order to study the effects of tempests. His compositions, which are very numerous, are nearly all variations of one subject, and in a style peculiarly his own, marked by intense realism, or faithful imitation of nature. In his later years Backhuysen employed his time in etching and caligraphy. Several of his best pieces are in the gallery of the Louvre.

 

ACON,, , , was born at York House in the Strand, London, on the 22d January 1561. He was the youngest son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the celebrated lawyer and statesman, who for twenty years of Elizabeth's reign held the seals as lord keeper. His mother, the second wife of Sir Nicholas, was a daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke, formerly tutor to Edward VI. She was a woman of considerable culture, well skilled in the classical studies of the period, and a warm adherent of the Reformed or Puritan Church. One of her sisters was married to the famous Lord Treasurer Burghley. Very little is known of Bacon's early life and education. His health being then, as always, extremely delicate, he probably received much of his instruction at home. Yet, Rawley tells us, "his first and childish years were not without some mark of eminency; at which time he was endued with that pregnancy and towardness of wit, as they were presages of that deep and universal apprehension which was manifest in him afterwards, and caused him to be taken notice of by several persons of worth and place, and especially by the queen, who, as I have been informed, delighted much to confer with him and to prove him with questions; unto whom he delivered himself with that gravity and maturity above his years that her majesty would often term him, The young lord keeper." In April 1573 he was entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, where for three years he resided with his brother Anthony. Our information with regard to these important years is singularly scanty. We know only that Bacon at Cambridge, like Descartes at La Flêche, applied himself diligently to the several sciences as then taught, and came to the conclusion that the methods employed and the results attained were alike worthless and erroneous. Although he preserved a reverence for Aristotle (of whom, however, he seems to have known but little), he learned to despise the Aristotelian philosophy. It yielded no fruit, was serviceable only for disputation, and the end it proposed to itself was a mistaken one. Philosophy must be taught its true business, and to attain its new aim a new method must be devised. With the first germs of this great conception in his mind, Bacon left the university in 1576.

In the same year he and his brother Anthony were entered de societate magistrorum at Gray's Inn, and a few months later he was sent abroad with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English ambassador at Paris. He spent some time in that city, and travelled through several of the French provinces. The disturbed state of government and society in France at that time must have afforded him much valuable political instruction; and it has been commonly supposed that certain Notes on the State of Christendom, usually printed in his works, contain the results of his observations. But Mr Spedding has shown that there is no reason for ascribing these "Notes" to him, and that they may be attributed with more probability to one of his brother Anthony's correspondents.

The sudden death of his father in February 1579 necessitated Bacon's return to England, and exercised a very serious influence on his fortunes. A considerable sum of money had been laid up by Sir Nicholas in order to purchase an estate for his youngest son, the only one otherwise unprovided for. Owing to his sudden death, this intention was not carried out, and but a fifth part of the money descended to Francis, who thus began his career in comparative poverty. It was one of the gravest misfortunes of his life: he started with insufficient means, acquired a habit of borrowing, and was never afterwards out of debt. As it had become absolutely necessary that he should adopt some profession by which an adequate income would be yielded, he selected that of law, and took up his residence at Gray's Inn in 1579.

Nothing throws so clear a light on the career of any great man as a knowledge of his character and aims when he made the first step into the world. We learn from this how he himself desired to shape his course, and at every point can see how far his actions correspond to the end he had placed before him. We have, fortunately, information from Bacon himself on these points. In the fragment De Interpretatione Naturæ Proœmium (written probably about 1603) he analyses his own mental character, and lays before us the objects he had in view when he entered on public life. If his opening sentence, Ego cum me ad utilitates humanas natum existimarem, seems at first sight a little arrogant, it must be remembered that it is the arrogance of the, who thinks himself worthy