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of food. The efforts of malevolence, however, did not deprive this great man of the esteem and respect to which his distinguished talents and character entitled him. Pope Clement the Fourth wishing to obtain a complete copy of his works, extended to him his protection. Bacon complied with this desire, and sent his various. pieces (compiled into one work, under the title of "Opus Majus," to the Pope by a special messenger, whose name was John of Paris, and who was his own favorite disciple*. When he had been ten years in confinement, Jerome de Ascoli being elected Pope, Bacon solicited his holiness to be released; and towards the end of that Pope's reign, he obtained his liberty. He spent the remainder of his life in the college of his order, where he died, according to Anthony Wood, on the 11th of June, 1292. Tradition reports, that in order to prevent the uneasiness occasioned by his enemies in the earlier period of his life, and while he was prosecuting his studies and performing his experiments at Brazen-nose Hall at Oxford, he was obliged to retire from the University into a solitary place, called to this day "Friar Bacon's Study."

As the whole life of Friar Bacon was spent in study and retirement, we need not wonder that his works were very numerous. They are classed under the heads of grammar, mathematics, physic, optics, geography, astronomy, chronology, chemistry, magic, medicine, logic, metaphysics, ethics, theology, philology, and miscellany. Although allowance should be made for the language of panegyric which characterizes Bacon as the " brightest and most universal genius the world ever saw," he must ever be regarded as a prodigy of learning and science, and a very high rank must be assigned to him among those who have been instruments of enlightening and reforming the world †.

Though poetry did not flourish during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it did not fail for want of patronage. The Saxon Matilda, queen to Henry the First, was a generous patroness of poets. Longchamp, the favorite minister of Richard Coeur de Lion, kept many bards in his pay, and even allured minstrels from France to enliven the streets of London by their songs. The works, however, which met with such encouragement from people of rank, were composed in the Norman or French languages, the original English poetry

JOHN of PARIS was a poor boy of promising talents, taken by Bacon under his tuition, in order to try by experience the efficacy of his peculiar mode of instruction; and as the result of it, he observes, "that there was no room to conceive any high notions of the perfection of human wisdom, when it was possible, in a year's time, to teach a young man all that, with the utmost industry and application, a zealous enquirer after knowledge was able either to acquire or to discover in the space of twenty, or even forty, years." See more on this extraordinary man in the Hist. Univers. Oxon.-See Leland, Cave, and the Biographia Britannica, which contains a very elaborate account of Bacon's Works. The Works of Bacon are: 1. Epistola fratris Rogeri Baconis de Secretis Operibus Artis et Naturæ, et de Nullitate Magiæ, Paris, 1542, 4to. Basil, 1593, 8vo.--2. Opus Majus, Lond. 1733, fol. published by Dr. Jebb. 3. Thesaurus Chemicus, Francf. 1603, 1620. Besides which, there are said to remain in different libraries, several manuscripts of his not yet published.

being but little cultivated. The neglect of our poetry must be attributed to William the Conqueror. In order to subjugate the minds of his people, he projected the abolition of the English language, and by admitting at Court no other language than French, he caused all the youth in the schools of the kingdom to be instructed in it*.

The most ancient English song now extant is preserved in a manuscript in the British Museum †, and is believed to have been written at least as early as the year 1250. It is in praise of the Cuckoo, and" in a measure which is its own music." The following is a translation of it:—

"Summer is come in,

Loud sings the cuckoo;

Now the seed grows, and the mead blows,

And the wood springs.

The ewe bleats after the lambs,

The calf lows after the cow;

The bullock starts,

The buck verts;

Merrily sings the cuckoo :

Well singest thou cuckoo;
Mayest thou never cease.'

T. H. K.

GOOD NIGHT.

GOOD night---good night; go, sweetly sleep,
Pale Hecate's glories disappear;

Good spirits watch shall o'er thee keep,

Thou'st nought to grieve thee, nought to fear.
Go; close in sleep those eyes so bright;

Good night, dear maid, good night---good night.

Sleep calmly, 'till on hill and stream
Aurora's golden smiles shall fall;
And in that sleep let some kind dream
Our daily thoughts and looks recall.
Soft be thy dreams, thy slumber light,

Good night, dear maid, good night---good night.

S. R. J.

Dr. Johnson's Hist. of the Eng. Language.
Goes to harbour in the fern.

+ Harl. Lib. No. 978.

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"Pпo, pho," said Sleighton," what though your old uncle has died and cheated you, nil desperandum! Were you old, ugly, and a bore, then, indeed, you might stick neck high in the slough of despond; but yours is une autre affaire altogether."

"But I am fit for nothing," urged Eggleston; "I have been nursed in indulgence; reared amid luxury and profusion; grown up without a thought or dread of to-morrow; been taught to look on myself as sole heir to the large estates of my uncle; and now he has willed them elsewhere, and I am a beggar !"

"Then you must--marry," said Sleighton, gravely.

"And in the name of wonder who would marry me under such circumstances? or how am I, who cannot support myself, to provide for a wife?"

"She must provide for you :" and Sleighton was as serious as before. There was a short pause, which was broken by himself, as he murmured, "Eton-Oxford-two-and-twenty-dark blue eyesheight, near six feet--fine shoulders-well-turned leg-in at Almack's -aquiline nose and Grecian lips--classical forehead and rich hairEggleston," he added, in a higher key, addressing himself more directly to his companion," you will be cheap at thirty thousand !" "Are you mad, Sleighton?"

“No, mon ami, mais, pous telles choses, the women are-come, come; you might have Arabella Goldsbey on demand, and she will thank you in her heart for the opportunity."

"Heavens, she squints!"

"Qu' importe? so do your fortunes. A man never refuses a few bank notes because they chance to be soiled." Eggleston sighed audibly. "I did not think you were so young," pursued his friend. "Matrimony, Ferdinand, is the best speculation extant, ay, it beats the joint stock companies à poudre, for you may embark in it with no other capital than good eyes, ready wit, and unabashable impudence -listen to me, and learn wisdom. Lusignan Feathercourt was a neighbour of my father's: his worthy parent, Mr. Jeremy Feathercourt, gave him a fine education, four years on the Continent, two hundred per annum to starve upon, and turned him adrift. Eustace, the elder brother, took the estate, and the old man divided the hard cash among the girls. Va t'en,' said the papa, Lusignan walked off accordingly; he was a good-looking fellow, well built, and as elastic as Indian rubber-a famous shot, a fine dancer, a capital flirt, valsed á ravir, ejected small talk, as though he had been born pour cela, and above all, he never forgot that he must be the architect of his own fortunes. Eh bien! to London he came: dressed high,

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though he could not pay his tailor; betted high, when any one would take his bet; lived high, until he became a walking 'bad debt' to every hotel-keeper about town; rode hard, when he borrowed a friend's horse; stared hard, when he thought a girl's complexion looked bilious from her father's gold; and worked hard, at his toilette-glass. In short, Feathercourt was en route for a good thing, if ever man was, when the blockhead fell in love--slap dash, bona fide, in love! He was making up to Miss Gustina Grachet, the only daughter and heiress of old Bartholomew Grachet, a retired slop-seller, who had a snug fifty thousand in bank stock, and sundry little etceteras elsewhere. The father, to be sure, shuffled, and screwed, and talked about his expectations and such like irrationalities; but Mademoiselle herself did seriously incline to his addresses, and all went on as flourishingly as he could wish; truth to tell, the young lady had light grey eyes, and red hair, measured some yard and quarter round the waist, and had encouraged her shoulders into a visiting acquaintance with her ears, stretched her father's shoes, and had never been able altogether to divide the interests of the v's and w's of her discourse; but these were "trifles light as air" to one who had eyes, hair, shape, and expression for both; and he also wisely remembered, that although Miss Grachet chose to talk, it would be very easy to make Mrs. Feathercourt hold her tongue; and that even if the spinster thought proper to sport red ringlets, the matron might be easily initiated into the propriety of having her head shaved, or wearing caps.

"It was a pity that such a sensible fellow should lose himself, but he did nevertheless; went to Bath, saw Almeria Stanhope, a girl of high family, and high breeding, without a sous, and fell in love! Then he began to curse fortune, as all men do, who have more sentiment than sense; played the guitar and the fool with the Stanhope, and left the Grachet to pat the piano, and warble' Vill you come to the bower,' by herself: then there were moonlight walks and tailors' bills, and serenades, and ice creams, and new music, and new pastry, and heart aches, and Atkinson's curling fluid-but who does not know something of the agreeable mélange of a love affair? Still this might have been very well-he liked it, and she liked him but he wanted to marry her, and then came a statement of impossibilities; aristocratic letters from her aristocratic relations, ingeniously folded en envelopes, unfranked-deprecating epistles from his own fathermore explanations, a series of hysterics, and a parting! Miss Stanhope went into a decline, and was hurried off to Lisbon, and Lusignan Feathercourt voted himself miserable; loitered about town another season, running new bills, and new perils; distancing bailiffs, and coaxing Israelites; and it all ended at last by the death of old Grachet, an accomodement between his fair daughter and the love-sick Lusignan, and the arrival of the bridal party at the white-washed villa, facing the north gate of Sleighton Park."

"What a miserable match!" ejaculated Eggleston.
"And wherefore?" demanded his friend.

"Feathercourt

remained three weeks with his wife-knocked up a quarrel, and left her-the result of nineteen out of twenty marriages in the nineteenth century: he has come in for a good thing, and she has got a husband. So, once more, nil desperandum, say I!"

"Before I do this, I will vend ballads in the streets," said Eggleston: "the man who can basely barter honor, feeling, self-respect, and the welfare of a trusting woman, to his own vile interests, is more despicable than a common robber; the one destroys but the world's wealth, the other, the heart's peace!"

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