The Hillsborough recorder. [volume] (Hillsborough, N.C.) 1820-1879, 1857-12-02

always in debt, and, when he could borr ow
no more, had recourse to the desperate ex-
pedient Of judicial corruption.
In the Essay on Great Place, he dwells on
the necessity Of binding the hands Of the
servants; yet he allowed his own servants
ito plumber both the suitors in his court and
himself. "Sit down." he said to them after
his Disgrace, when they rose on his approach;
"your rise has been my fall" No man
could owe more to another, than he did to
Lord Essex. His beneiactor was on his trial:
Bacon had not the courage to refuse to act
as counsel against him. Elizabeth wished
to escape from the odium thrown on herby
Essex's execution. She required Bacon to
write pamphlet to blacken the memory Of
his friend Bacon complied.
James, with his crue! cowardice, was eager
| to punish, as traitor, Peacham, whose only
crime was the possession of an offensive
manuscript. Bacon submitted to declare
what was at most a misdemeanor to be trea-
son; to cxtort, by private solicitation and
intimidation, the concurrence of the judges;
and to try to obtain further evidence against
the prisoner, by questioning him before
torture, IN torture, between torture, and af-
ter torture"
Bacon, during his greatness, always pro-
claimed his preference of study to business.
OF theory to practice; whether sincerely
may be doubted. g You may Observe" he
says, in his Essay on Envy, " that the more
deep and sober sort of polite persons, in
their greatness, are ever bemoaning them
selves what life they lead, chanting
quanta patimur,' moi that they feelh sos but
only to abate envy"
| " has often occurred to us to consider
what we should have gained, and what we
should have lost, if the revision Of the reg
istrarship of the Star Chamber had fallen to
him in his youth, and he had retired on it
into contemplative life.
He would have left us a much purer ex-
ample, but a less useful warning. II is ex-
quisitely mournful, but perhaps equally in
struchye, TO see a man of gigantic intellect,
OF kindly affections, who had long and deeply
meditated on virtue and on vice, who was
carried away by no violent passions, who
was borne down by no overwhelming temp
tation, seduced into crimes the most hateful
and the most despieable-into cruelty, OPP
preston, falsehood, ingratitude, and corrup-
ton, by mere weakness by the want Of
irmness, to resist the solicitations of the
sovereign, or of the fayorite of the soye-
reign; and by the want of self. denial, to
abstain from gratifying his vanity or his
taste, by an expense to which even his enor-
nous income was unequal.
lie would probably have completed the
einstanratio Magma. Much Of it no doubt
would have been very valuable much would
have consisted of speculations in physical
science, depending on premises deduced
from insufficient evidence, or assumed with
out any evidence whatever. But we should
not have had the Essays, such as we have
them now. Only long experience Of active
/ life; only constant collision with every class
Of mind, and every diversity Of character;
only passing through every variety Of for
tune, from poverty to wealth, and from
wealth to poyerty-from obscurity to fame,
and from fame to inlamy- from mediOcrity
to power, and from power to humiliation
could have given to him the deep and prac-
teal insight into human nature which pro-
duced the Essays in their last form. And
we are not sure that We should gain, even il
it were possible to exchange them for the
Desiderata.