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Page 154 : BACON — BACTERIA

Ba′con, Francis, one of the most extraordinary men that any age can boast. A scholar, a wit, a lawyer, a statesman, a philosopher, his writings will endure as long as the language in which they are written. He was born in London, January 22, 1561. He was sent to the University of Cambridge at the age of twelve. Before he was sixteen he wrote a paper against the philosophy of Aristotle, and at nineteen a work called On the State of Europe, the result of his studies while a member of the suite of the English ambassador at Paris. He was knighted in 1603, appointed consul to the crown, and in 1613 attorney-general. In 1617 he was made keeper of the great seal, and in 1618 appointed lord chancellor, with the title of Lord Verulam, and soon after was created Viscount St. Albans. His fall was as sudden as his rise was rapid. He was accused of bribery and convicted on his own confession. He was fined $200,000, and imprisoned in the Tower. Though the fine was remitted and the imprisonment lasted but two days, shame, added to failing health, kept him from appearing again at court. His death, April 9, 1626, was caused by a cold taken while making an experiment to test the power of snow to preserve flesh. Bacon’s writings are numerous, but he is known best by his philosophical works, Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum, which introduced a new method into philosophy. “He rang the bell which called the other wits together,” is his own description of the effect of these writings. The most popular of his works is his Essays, fifty-eight in number, on such subjects as Pride, Truth, Ambition, Riches, and they well repay study both of their contents and style.

Ba′con, Leonard, was the son of a missionary to the Indians, and was born at Detroit, Mich., in 1802. After graduating at Yale College and Andover Theological Seminary, he was a Congregational pastor at New Haven for many years. In 1866 he became professor of theology at Yale Divinity School and, later, lecturer on cnurch history. He was a prominent contributor to the Christian Spectator and the New Englandert and was for several years one of the editors of the New York Independent. He also published a number of works. He died at New Haven, Conn., December 24, 1881.

Bacon, Nathaniel, a colonial leader, of English birth, the chief figure in Bacon’s Rebellion, in Virginia, under the governorship of Sir Wm. Berkeley. He was born in Suffolk, England, January 2, 1647, and died (nominally a rebel) after the burning of Jamestown, Va., in October, 1676. He was educated at the London Inns of Court as a lawyer, and emigrating to Virginia, settled on the upper James River, and became a member of the governor’s council. The colonists of the region were then harassed by the Indians, and being dissatisfied with Governor Berkeley’s measures for the defense of the colony, they chose Bacon as their leader in the Indian war. Berkeley, however, proclaimed the expedition a treasonable one, and captured and tried Bacon; but he was acquitted by the council and reinstated as a member of the body. Bacon meanwhile opposed the governor’s authority in other ways, and especially his arbitrary and unjust taxation of the colonists, his inefficient Indian policy; and his measures of restricted suffrage. The Indians again invading the colony, Bacon once more set out to subdue them. This he did, but had also to fight the governor and his forces, who once more had proclaimed Bacon a rebel. In the struggle, Jamestown, the capital of the colony, was taken by Bacon and burned, the governor’s forces being routed, while Berkeley himself had to take refuge on an English ship in the river. At this juncture Bacon, however, died, and the war (styled Bacon’s Rebellion) came to an end. Its influence on the subsequent American Revolution is capable of being traced.

Ba′con, Roger (1214–94), was an English monk and scientist. He studied at Oxford and Paris, became a Franciscan monk about 1250, and devoted himself to science. He made discoveries that ignorant people considered magic. So he was imprisoned twenty years, with one brief space of freedom. He wrote a Latin book, called Opus Majus, giving a comprehensive view of the progress of human knowledge. He invented or improved the telescope. As a scientific discoverer he was centuries ahead of his age.

Bacte′ria, an immense group of extremely small plants which have attracted great attention on account of their relation to man and his interests. They are the smallest known of living organisms, whose adult bodies are sometimes barely visible under the highest powers of the microscope.

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(A) Bacterium, (B) bacillus (above), leptothrix (below), (C, D) sprillum, (E) sarcine.

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