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48 over Europe by the learning and by the fervid genius of her sons, disappears for more than a century and a half from the History of Letters.—But from this subject, so pregnant with melancholy and humiliating recollections, our attention is forcibly drawn to a mighty and auspicious light which, in a more fortunate part of the island, was already beginning to rise on the philosophical world.  CHAPTER II.

Progress of Philosophy in England during this period.

state of science towards the close of the sixteenth century, presented a field of observation singularly calculated to attract the curiosity, and to awaken the genius of Bacon; nor was it the least of his personal advantages, that, as the son of one of Queen Elizabeth’s ministers, he had a ready access, wherever he went, to the most enlightened society in Europe. While yet only in the seventeenth year of his age, he was removed by his father from Cambridge to Paris, where it is not to be doubted, that the novelty of the literary scene must have largely contributed to cherish the natural liberality and independence of his 

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