logic, although they had already begun to be studied, had not acquired in this country that extraordinary ascendency of which we find them only a few years after in possession. He, at all events, applied himself from the first chiefly to the mathematical and natural sciences, the principal of which, as cultivated at this time, may be enumerated under the heads of chymistry or alchymy, astronomy or astrology, medicine, and mechanics. To these may be added, as having engaged a considerable share of Bacon's attention, the minor departments of geography, music, and optics; which last especially was one of his favourite studies, and that in which he displayed, more perhaps than in any other, his brilliant and inventive genius. Nearly all these sciences were as yet mixed up with the wildest errors and follies, which were, however, universally looked upon as their most fundamental and unquestionable principles, and were, accordingly, steadily kept in view by all who taught or studied either the theory or the practical applications of any of them. The grand object of chymistry, at the time to which we refer, was the discovery of the philosopher's stone, or the secret of manufacturing gold: but the experiments which were constantly making with a view to this end had incidentally given birth to some real discoveries, especially in regard to the fusibility, malleability, and other properties of the different metals. Of these we may just state, that lead and copper were the two which the most persevering efforts were made to convert into gold, the former exciting the hope of a favourable result by its great weight, and the latter by its colour; no bad example of the purely imaginary ground which formed the whole theory and foundation of this art. Medicine was in much the same condition with chymistry, being studied, also, chiefly in the writings of the Arabian doctors, who had taken a particular pleasure in mystifying this science with all manner

of occult speculation, and bedizening it with their frivolous fancies and inventions. Its natural alliance with chymistry, in the first place, subjected it to be corrupted by all the absurdities of the Hermetic philosophy. But as these had originated chiefly in one of men's strongest passions, the love of wealth, so another passion still stronger, the fear of disease and death, operated in the case of medicine to give birth to a variety of other delusions, which retained their hold upon the public credulity with even yet more invincible obstinacy. In the unphilosophical times to which we now refer, it was little more than a heap of quackeries and superstitions; or at least the truths which it taught were so mixed up with the merest dreams and imaginations, and these latter were held to be so much the more important and essential part of it, that, if not the most vain and false of all the sciences of the period, there certainly was no other, even as then studied, which was disfigured, upon the whole, by more frivolity and nonsense. As the chymists thought of nothing but their elixir, or universal solvent of the metals, so the physicians had their elixir vitæ, or universal medicine, which was to cure all diseases, and, if not altogether to put an end to the custom of dying, at least to protract life to more than antediluvian longevity. Then the Arabian writers, in whose works the science was principally studied, had introduced into it a cloud of mystical and metaphysical notions from those other departments of inquiry to which they were almost all of them attached. One of the greatest of the Arabian physicians, Avicenna, was one of the most devoted admirers that ever lived of the metaphysical works of Aristotle; which, however, he ingen

*The science occupied with the pursuit of the philosopher's stone was so called in memory of the Egyptian philosopher Hermes.

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uously confesses he had perused no fewer than forty times before he understood them. Another of these doctors, Averroes, had written so many commentaries on the Greek philosopher, that he obtained the name of the most Peripatetic* of the Arabians. Another of them, called Alcendi, or Alchindus, had a strange theory with regard to the virtues of medicines, maintaining that they could only be properly mixed according to the principles of music; a notion which seems intended to defy either explanation or comprehension. But it was the intimate connexion it had formed with the philosophy of the stars, as then received, which gave to the medical science of the thirteenth and some succeeding centuries the greater part of its weakness and absurdity. Medicine, in truth, was for a long time considered as only one of the branches of astronomy or astrology, terms which in those days were synonymous. One of Roger Bacon's own expressions is, that the most important department of astronomy is the science of medicine. Operations, accordingly, used to be performed, and remedies administered, not so much in conformity to the appearance or nature of the disease, as according to the aspect of the constellations. For it was the study of the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to exert over human affairs and the fortunes of individuals, that constituted the favourite astronomy of the times; or rather no part of astronomy was studied at all except with a view principally to the observation and detection of this imaginary sympathy between the stars and men. In those days this was not the belief merely of a few of the most ignorant and credulous of the vulgar, but the nearly

*The philosophy of Aristotle was called the Peripatetic, from a Greek word signifying to walk about, because its founder was wont to walk about while he conversed with and instructed his disciples.

universal creed even of the learned. The science of judicial astrology, as it was called, from the judgments with respect to the future which its profes sors pretended by means of it to draw from the stars, was imported into Europe much about the same time with that of alchymy, and from the same Arabian school. The Arabian writers, however, had found it in the works of their predecessors, the disciples of the Greek school at Alexandria; and especially in their commentaries on a celebrated work by the geographer Ptolemy, now commonly known by the name of his Almagestum or Almagest, although that is only an Arabic term, signifying The Great Work, which was bestowed upon the book as a complimentary title by those who translated it into that language. The Almagest of Ptolemy may therefore be considered as the grand source of all the astrological superstitions both of the East and of modern Europe.

Bacon himself informs us, in one of his works, that, notwithstanding the state of unreclaimed barbarism in which all the more important departments of learning still remained, there never had been known such an intellectual excitement as had arisen in his time. We have a gratifying proof of the zeal now felt in behalf of philosophy, and the honour in which it was held, in the reception Bacon is recorded to have met with on his return from France to his own country, to which he was welcomed as one of the glories of the age; while a sum of money was immediately collected and given to him to enable him to prosecute those scientific investigations by which he had already acquired so much celebrity. He tells us himself that, in the course of twenty years, he had been enabled, by this liberality of his friends, to expend, in collecting books, performing experiments, and constructing instruments, no less than two thousand pounds; a much larger sum in those days than in our own.

Thus

encouraged and supported, he pursued his research es in natural science for some time without interruption, and with a zeal and indefatigable application to which the works he has left us furnish abundant testimony. Unfortunately, however, for his peace, though nothing that is recorded of him is more honourable to the purity and intrepidity of his moral character, he could not remain a silent witness of the disgraceful ignorance and profligacy of the generality of his ecclesiastical brethren; and his denunciations upon this subject became at last so loud and unguarded, that they reached the ears of those who were most certain both to feel their justice and never to forgive them. Immediately he felt what it was to have provoked the hostility of so all-powerful a community as the church then was, and to stand as a mark for both the open fury and concealed rancour of a body of men, kept united and powerful by their common interests and common fears, and having in their hands not only many of the terrors of civil authority, but the whole of that still more formidable power which belonged to an absolute supremacy over the creed, the consciences, and the passions of the people. The life of the philosopher becomes now, with little intermission, only a tale of persecution and cruel suffering. The ignorance and stupid bigotry of the times made it unhappily too easy a matter for his enemies to find the means of amply avenging themselves. It was little more than a century since the pope himself had experienced how perilous a task he attempted when he set about reforming the corruptions of the clergy. Gregory VII. had, about the time to which we refer, signalized his accession to the chair of St. Peter by some strenuous endeavours to repress the abounding irregularities which had long pervaded all ranks of the priesthood; when both the inferior clergy, and many of the bishops themselves, openly and indigantly re