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shall find he has got is, that his Latin and Greek have only made him a greater and more conceited coxcomb, than when he went from home. He should bring his soul replete with good literature, and he brings it only swelled and puffed up with vain and empty shreds and snatches of learning, and has really nothing more in him than he had before."

Montaigne strongly inveighs against the mechanical methods in vogue. "It is the custom of schoolmasters," he says, "to be eternally thundering in their pupils' ears as if they were pouring into a funnel, while the pupils' business is only to repeat what their masters have said. Now, I would have a tutor correct this error, and that at the very first; he should, according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste and relish things, and of himself to choose and discern them, the tutor sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes making him break the ice himself; that is, I would not have the tutor alone to invent and speak, but that he should also hear his pupils speak."

Of the cramming process then current, particularly among the Jesuits, Montaigne says: "Too much learning stifles the soul, just as plants are stifled by too much moisture, and lamps by too much oil. Our pedants plunder knowledge from books and carry it on the tip of their lips, just as birds carry seeds to feed their young. The care and expense our parents are at in our education point at nothing but to furnish our heads with knowledge; but not a word of judgment or virtue. We toil and labor only to stuff the memory, but leave the conscience and understanding unfurnished and void."

In reference to discipline, Montaigne says: "Educa

tion ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle ways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than which I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a well-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and chastisement, do not harden him to them."

Interesting and valuable extracts might be indefinitely multiplied, but one more, relating to the chief subject of study, must suffice. "This great world," says Montaigne, "is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to know ourselves as we ought to do. In short, I would have this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most attention; for so many humors, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws, and customs, teach us to judge right of our own, and inform our understandings to discover their imperfection and natural infirmity, which is no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our hopes ridiculous of eternizing our names by the taking of half a score of light-horse, or a paltry turret, which only derives its memory from its ruin. The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps and ceremonies, the tumorous majesty of so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight

without astonishment to behold and endure the luster of our own. So many millions of men buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek so good company in the other world."

(B.) BACON.

Francis Bacon, who has done more perhaps for the advancement of knowledge than any other man of modern times, was born in London in 1561. He was of delicate constitution, but endued with remarkable intellectual power. From childhood he manifested a philosophical turn of mind, and it is related of him that he stole away from his playmates to indulge his thought and spirit of investigation. Queen Elizabeth, delighted with his youthful precocity, playfully called him her young Lord Keeper. At thirteen he was matriculated at the University of Cambridge, and it was not long till his keen penetration detected the faults belonging to the higher education of the time. He found himself, to use his own language, "amid men of sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of reading, their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors, chiefly Aristotle, their dictator, as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries and colleges; and who, knowing little history, either of nature or time, did, out of no great quantity of matter, and infinite agitation of wit, spin cobwebs of learning, admirable for the fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit."

He remained at the university three years. After spending some time in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of many distinguished persons, he returned

to England, and devoted himself to the study of law, in which he speedily made profound attainments. Owing to the opposition of his uncle, Cecil, who held the position of prime minister, he was kept for a time from any post of prominence and emolument. In 1590 he was made counsel-extraordinary to the queen—a position of more honor than profit. Two years later he entered Parliament as member from Middlesex. His legal and political functions did not wholly absorb the energies of his mind, and in 1597 he published a volume of "Essays," which alone would have sufficed to give him an honorable place in English literature.

After the accession of James I., in 1603, Bacon rose rapidly in position and honor. That year he was elevated to the order of knighthood, and in the following year he was appointed salaried counsel to the king—a mark of favor almost without precedent. In 1613 he was advanced to the office of attorney-general. In 1617 he was created Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England- —a dignity of which he was proud. The following year he was made Lord High Chancellor, the summit of his ambition and political elevation.

In these positions, Bacon's conduct was not above reproach. He truckled to the king; he was guilty of gross ingratitude to Essex, one of his greatest benefactors; and, worst of all, he was convicted on his own confession of accepting bribes. He was condemned to pay an enormous fine, and to be confined in the Tower during the royal pleasure; but these penalties, after he was imprisoned two days, were remitted by the king, who was not free himself from implication in the crimes of his chancellor. The rest of Bacon's days were spent

in poverty, disgrace, and repentance. He died in 1626, about five years after his fall.

The numerous works of Bacon, written in the leisure moments snatched from official duties, established his reputation throughout Europe as the leading English philosopher. He has repeatedly touched upon education in his writings, and everywhere with the hand of a master. He holds a prominent place in the line of educational reformers. "This significance," says Raumer, "Bacon receives as the first to say to the learned men who lived and toiled in the languages and writings of antiquity, and who were mostly only echoes of the old Greeks and Romans, yea, who knew nothing better than to be such: There is also a present; only open your eyes to recognize its splendor. Turn away from the shallow springs of traditional natural science, and draw from the unfathomable and ever freshly flowing fountain of creation. Live in Nature with active senses; ponder it in your thoughts, and learn to comprehend it, for thus will be able also to control it. Power increases with knowledge.""

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Bacon's first great philosophical work, published in 1605, was the "Advancement of Learning." It was the aim of this work to take a complete survey of the field of knowledge, for the purpose of indicating what departments of learning had received due attention, and what subjects yet needed cultivation. To use his own words: "I have made, as it were, a small globe of the intellectual world, as truly and faithfully as I could discover; with a note and description of those parts which seem to me not constantly occupate, or not well converted by the labor of man."

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