BACON.

THINE is a Bacon-hapless in his choice;
Unfit to stand the civil storm of state,
And through the smooth barbarity of courts,
With firm but pliant virtue, forward still

To urge his course-him for the studious shade
Kind nature formed, deep, comprehensive, clear,
Exact and elegant; in one rich soul,

Plato, the Stagyrite, and Tully joined.

The great deliverer He! who from the gloom

Of cloistered monks and jargon-teaching schools,

Led forth the true philosophy, there long

Held in the magic chain of words and forms,
And definitions void;-he led her forth,
Daughter of Heaven! that slow-ascending still,
Investigating sure the chain of things

With radiant finger points to Heaven again.

THESE elegant lines of Thomson afford a short but comprehensive idea of the illustrious man whose life and character now engage our attention.

England, at a distance of three centuries, produced two celebrated genius' of this name. Roger Bacon, a poor friar of the thirteenth century, made the most astonishing discoveries in physics, to the wonder and dismay of a barbarous age, which accused him of sorcery, and compelled him to justify himself from a supposed familiarity with the devil; and Francis Bacon, who developed

66