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