Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/231

 FRANCIS BACON 155 We can see in him the two natures of his father and his mother the com- mingling of the powerful, practical, sagacious politician and man of affairs, with the studious, contemplative, imaginative, affectionate, religious enthusiast. His birthplace was a palace ; the country- seat of Gorhamsbury, near Saint Albans' vil- lage, is in the midst of the most charming rural scenery in England, or in the world. There a great part of his youth and early man- hood was passed. He came into this breathing world when the human race were upon the threshold of the tremendous development which now sur- rounds us. He was born sixty-nine years after Columbus had re-opened the long : closed pathway from the eastern to the western shores of the Atlantic Ocean ; twenty-seven years after the French took possession of Canada ; twelve years after the Portuguese settled in Brazil ; and forty-six years before the first English colonists landed at James- town, Va. The degree of advancement of the mind of the age will be understood when it is remembered that it was only one hundred and twenty-five years, at the date of Bacon's birth, since Guttenberg had invented movable types, in Germany ; and but eighty-seven years since Caxton set up his printing press at Westminster. No man has ever lived who did more than Bacon to change the opinions and condition of those who came after him. It was a "day of little things." England contained less than five million in- habitants, and of these probably not one-tenth spoke a language which could be understood to-day by the English-using people of the world. The mass of the populace were steeped to the lips in brutality and ignorance. The houses of the peasants were built of " sticks and dirt ; " many of them " without chimneys or glazed windows;" the habits of the people were "inconceivably filthy;" " scurvy and leprosy were endemic ; " the schools did not, as a rule, teach Eng- lish ; the amusements of the populace were bear-baitings and dancing naked in barns ; the people of one county could not understand the speech of the inhabi- tants of the next county ; " the disputes about tithes and boundaries were usually settled by bands of armed men, and the records of the Star-Chamber swarm with such cases." Education was at a low ebb. " In one year, 1570 (Bacon was then nine years of age), the scholars of Trinity College, Cambridge, consumed 2,250 barrels of beer." Many of the graduates became beggars ; and so extensive was this evil that Parliament, by an act of i4th Elizabeth, declared that "all scholars of the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge that go about begging, not being authorized under the seal of the said universities," are declared " vagabonds " and