and responsible force prudently exerted
safer than the submission, without a struggle, to unlawful and
irresponsible violence.

Peace is the greatest of blessings, when it is won and kept by manhood
and wisdom; but it is a blessing that will not long be the housemate of
cowardice. It is God alone who is powerful enough to let His authority
slumber; it is only His laws that are strong enough to protect and
avenge themselves. Every human government is bound to make its laws
so far resemble His, that they shall be uniform, certain, and
unquestionable in their operation; and this it can do only by a timely
show of power, and by an appeal to that authority which is of divine
right, inasmuch as its office is to maintain that order which is the
single attribute of the Infinite Reason that we can clearly apprehend
and of which we have hourly example.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Personal History of Lord Bacon, From Unpublished Papers. By WILLIAM
HEPWORTH DIXON, of the Inner Temple. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 12mo. pp.
424.

The life of Bacon, as it has been ordinarily written, presents contrasts
so strange, that thoughtful readers have been compelled either to doubt
the accuracy of the narrative, or to admit that in his case Nature
departed from her usual processes, and embodied antithesis in a man. The
character suggested by the events of his life has long been in direct
opposition to the character impressed on his writings; and Macaulay, who
gave to the popular opinion its most emphatic and sparkling expression,
increased this difference by exaggerating the opposite elements of the
human epigram, and ended in manufacturing the most brilliant monstrosity
that ever bore the name of a person. Lord Campbell followed with a
biography having all the appearance of conscientious research and
judicial impartiality, but which was really nothing more than a weak
translation of Macaulay's vivid sentences into such English "as it had
pleased God to endow him withal." Bacon, to all inquiring men, still
remained outside of the statements of both; and after the lapse of
nearly two centuries, the slight biographical sketch by his chaplain,
Dr. Rawleigh, conveyed a juster idea of the man than all the
biographies by which it had been succeeded, but not superseded.

Mr. Dixon's "Personal History of Lord Bacon" is the first attempt to
vindicate his fame by original research into unpublished d