the discussion of grievances, facts tending to implicate the chancellor's integrity were unfortunately disclosed by the lower house. This important investigation commenced on the 12th of March, 1621; on the 19th of March accusations being exhibited against his lordship, a letter from him was laid before the peers by the Duke of Buckingham; finding additional charges preferred against him on the 21st of March, a second letter, in which he strongly appeals to the generosity and feelings of nobility, was presented to their lordships by the prince, afterwards Charles I., on the 24th of April. On the 3d of May, notwithstanding every method resorted to in order to abate the violence of prosecution, he received his bitter sentence from that parliament in whose formation he had been sedulously employed: he was adjudged to undergo a fine and ransom of £40,000, to be imprisoned in the Tower during the king's pleasure, to be for ever incapable of any office, place, or employment, in the state or commonwealth; that he should never sit in parliament, nor come within the verge of the court!

James is reported to have shed tears when he was informed of this sentence. Circumstances impartially considered, it does not appear that the king could have shielded his chancellor without rekindling the public indignation. It was at the favourite, through his lordship, that the arrows of persecution were aimed; they were the sins of Buckingham, which Bacon was destined to carry into banishment, and bear on his devoted head: he had the fate to sustain, unpitied and unsupported, the full weight of that resentment which ought to have been divided among many. Not one of the chancellor's decrees was afterwards reversed; and there is ample reason to confide in his declaration— that he had accepted money for the expediting only, never for the perversion, of justice.

Instead of bending before the moral tempest, his lordship continued undaunted and erect. Withdrawn from scenes to which he was by nature and reflection unfitted, he applied himself to the pleasures of philosophy, and the consolations of religion.

Amidst the calm of literary retirement, he had leisure to consider himself; to contrast and compare his fortunes with those of some illustrious characters, who, like him, had been doomed to exchange prosperity for adversity, society for exile; and from their history to deduce examples for his own imitation. By March, 1622, he so far recovered from the recent effects of calamity, as to publish the " History of Henry VII." dedi

cated to the Prince of Wales.

What could not prudently be attempted at once, was gradually and safely effected. His lordship was first released from imprisonment; then, his fine was remitted; afterwards, a warrant was signed for his pardon; and lastly, he was allowed to return within the verge of the court.

Much has constantly been said in commiseration of Lord Bacon's poverty, complaints of which abound in letters written by him during his humiliation. He, however, could not consistently be denominated poor, who possessed property amounting to £2500

a year. Perplexed as his affairs then were, he might indeed be alarmed under the apprehension of dying insolvent; especially since, with diminished resources, he disdained to reduce his establishments, or abate any vestige of his former splendour. The principal difficulty with which he appears at this time to have struggled, consisted in being unable regularly to procure the payment of money privately advanced to him on account of the king-a difficulty from which he was released by Buckingham, on that nobleman's return from his Spanish mission, and by whom the commendation of a warm and faithful friend is unquestionably merited.

The pardon of his faithful servant and chancellor being among the last acts of King James, Lord Bacon was summoned to the first parliament of Charles I.; in which, however, infirmity prevented his attendance. In an earlier stage of this indisposition, he was honoured by a visit from the Marquis D'Effiat, who had accompanied the Princess Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. to England." You resemble," said the marquis,

finding his lordship in bed with the curtains drawn, "the angels: we hear those beings continually talked of, we believe them superior to mankind, and we never have the consolation to see them."-" If," rejoined Lord Bacon, "the charity of others compare me to an angel, my own infirmities tell me I am a man!"

Study, anxiety, and occasional attention to public affairs, from which he never was wholly detached, had undermined his health, and secretly impaired his mind; nor had he been altogether unaffected by the severe winter that succeeded the infectious summer of 1625. He, however, appeared to revive with the spring of the ensuing year, till, while trying some experiments concerning the conservation and induration of bodies, he so far relapsed as induced him to quit York House, where he then was, for St. Alban's. While proceeding on his journey, he was suddenly struck in the stomach, which compelled him to stop at the Earl of Arundel's house, in Highgate. There he sickened with a fever, attended with a defluxion on