Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/192

 metals rust; fluids turn sour; and in animals when the spirit which held the parts together escapes, all things are dissolved, and return to their own natures or principles: the oily parts to themselves; the aqueous also to themselves, &c.; upon which necessarily ensues that odour, that unctuosily, that confusion of parts observable in putrefaction;" So true is it, that in nature all is beauty: that not withstanding our partial views and distressing associations, the forms of death, mis-shapen as we suppose them, are but the tendencies to union in similar natures.—To the astronomer, the setting sun is as worthy of notice as its golden beams of orient light.

See lastly his epitaph upon the monument raised by his affectionate and faithful Secretary, who lies at his feet; and although only a few letters of his name, scarcely legible, can now be traced, he will ever be remembered for his affectionate attachment to his master and friend. Upon the monument which he raised to Lord Bacon, who appears sitting in deep but tranquil thought, he has inscribed this epitaph:

Any person who is desirous to see the confirmation of these opinions upon death will find the subject exhausted in a noble essay, in Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. 7, in his inquiry whether we cannot help ourselves by the use of our reason, so as to brave looking death calmly and steadily in the face to contemplate all his features and examine fairly what there is of terrible and what of harmless in them.

See Bacon's Essay on Church Controversies.

See Advancement of Learning, as to the Art of Revealing a Man's Self, and the Art of covering Defects. And see the Analysis of this subject in the analysis.

On this subject, see Bishop's Taylor's sermon entitled "The Marriage Ring."

. There are some observations upon Envy, in Taylor's Holy Living.

See Bishop Taylor's Holy Living, of Charity, or the Love of God.

It begins thus: "Love is the greatest thing that God can give us, for himself is love; and it is the greatest thing we can give to God, for it will also give ourselves, and carry with it all that is ours. The apostle calls it 'the band of perfection;' it is the old, and it is the new, and it is the great commandment, and it is all the commandments, for it is 'the fulfilling of the law.' It does the work of all other graces, without any instrument but its own immediate virtue. For as the love to sin makes a man sin against all his own reason, and all the discourses of wisdom, and all the advices of his friends, and without temptation, and without opportunity: so does the love of God; it makes a man chaste without the laborious acts of fasting and exterior disciplines, temperate in the midst of feasts, and is active enough to choose it without any intermedial appetites, and reaches at glory through the very heart of grace, without any other arms but those of love." Then see his magnificent discourse on Friendship in his polemical discourses. "Christian charity is friendship to all the world; and when friendships were the noblest things in the world, charity was little, like the sun drawn in at a chink, or his beams drawn into the centre of a burning-glass; but Christian charity is friendship expanded, like the face of the sun when it mounts above the eastern hills; and I was strangely pleased when I saw something of this in Cicero; for I have been so push'd at by herds and flocks of people that follow any body that whistles to them, or drives them to pasture, that I am grown afraid of any truth that seems chargeable with singularity: but therefore I say, glad I was when I saw Lætius in Cicero discourse thus: 'Amicitia ex infinitate generis humani am conciliavit ipsa natura, contracta res est, et adducta in angustum; ut omnis charitas, aut inter duos, aut inter paucos jungeretur.' Nature hath made friendships and societies, relations and endearments; and by something or other we relate to all the world; there is enough in every man that is willing to make him become our friend; but when men contract friendships, they inclose the commons: and what nature intended should be every man's, we make proper to two or three. Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air,—common to all the world; but tyrants and evil customs, wars, and want of love have made them proper and peculiar."

"The friendship is equal to all the world, and of itself hath no difference; but is differenced only by accidents, and by the capacity or incapacity of them that receive it. For thus the sun is the eye of the world; and he is indifferent to the Negro, or the cold Russian, to them that dwell under the line, and them that stand near the tropics, the scalded Indian or the poor boy that shakes at the foot of the Riphean hills. But the fluxures of the heaven and the earth, the conveniency of abode, and the approaches to the north or south respectively change the emanations of his beams; not that they do not pass always from him, but that they are not equally received below, but by periods and changes, by little inlets and reflections, they receive what they can. And some have only a dark day and a long night from him, snows and white cattle, a miserable life, and a perpetual harvest of cattarhes and consumptions, apoplexies and dead palsies. But some have splendid fires and aromatic spices, rich wines and well-digested fruits, great wit and great courage, because they dwell in his eye, and look in his face, and are the courtiers of the sun, and wait npon him in his chambers of the east. Just so is it in friendships," &c.

"It was both pleasantly and wisely said, though I think very untruly, by a nuncio of the pope, returning from a certain nation where he served as lieger; whose opinion being asked touching the appointment of one to go in his place, he wished that in any case they did not send one that was too wise; because no very wise man would ever imagine what they in that country were like to do. And certainly it is an error frequent for men to shoot over, and to suppose deeper ends, and more compass-reaches than are; the Italian proverb being elegant, and for the most part true:

(There is commonly less money, less wisdom, and less good faith than men do account upon.)

See the treatise de Augmentis, book viii. chapter 3, where the subject to which this note is annexed, is investigated.

"Let slates and kingdoms that aim at greatness by all means take heed how the nobility and grandees, and that those which we call gentlemen, multiply too fast; for that makes the common subject grow to be a peasant and base swain driven out of heart, and in effect nothing else but the nobleman's bondslaves and labourers. Even as you may see in coppice-wood, 'if you leave your studdles too thick, you shall never have clean underwood, but shrubs and bushes: as in a country, if the nobility be too many, the commons will be base and heartless, and you will bring it to that, that not the hundredth pole will be fit for an helmet; especially as to the infantry, which is the nerve of an army, and so there will be a great population and little strength. This which I speak of, hath been in no nation more clearly confirmed than in the examples of England and France, whereof England, though far inferior in territory and population, hath been nevertheless always an overmatch in arms, in regard the middle people of England make good soldiers, which the peasants of France do not. And herein the device of Henry the Seventh King of England, whereof I have spoken largely in the history of his life, was profound and admirable, in making farms and houses of husbandry of a standard; that is, maintained with such a proportion of land unto them, as may breed a subject to live in convenient plenty, and to keep the plough in the hands of the owners, or at least usefructuary, and not hirelings and mercenaries, and thus a country shall merit that character whereby Virgil expresses ancient Italy,

Neither is that state which is almost peculiar to England, and for any thing I know, hardly to be found anywhere else, except it be perhaps in Poland, to be passed over, I mean the