tional force and acuteness, the strength of her reason
still triumphed over her passions, and the struggle which her victories
cost her served but to display the firmness of her resolution and the
loftiness of her mind.

The praises which have by some been bestowed upon Elizabeth for her
regard for the constitution and tender concern for the liberties of the
people, are wholly without foundation. Few princes have exerted with
more arbitrary power the regal prerogatives which had been transmitted
to her by her immediate predecessors; yet no censure belongs to her for
this conduct, in the principles of which she had been trained and of the
justice of which she was persuaded. What potentate, what man, has
voluntarily resigned the power in which those beneath him quietly
acquiesced? Compared with the reigns of her father and sister, that of
Elizabeth might be termed a golden age.

FRANCIS BACON[14]

By HON. IGNATIUS DONNELLY

(1561-1626)

[Footnote 14: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

Francis Bacon was born in York House, London, on January 22, 1561. Of
this building only the ancient water-gate, fronting the Thames, survives
the waste of time. His father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, was for twenty years
Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth--a famous statesman,
orator, and wit. His mother, Lady Ann Bacon, was the second daughter of
the celebrated Sir Anthony Cooke, formerly tutor of King Edward VI.,
Henry VIII.'s short-lived son. She was a woman of great learning and
many accomplishments, and of a strong, earnest, passionate,
affectionate, and religious nature.

Francis was the youngest of eight children, six of whom were by the
first wife of Sir Nicholas. He belonged to the aristocracy of England,
but not to that ancient, warlike race of battle-crowned warriors, whose
pedigree dated back beyond the Crusades. His father was a lawyer. Both
his father's family and his mother's seem to have risen from the ranks
on the great wave of the Reformation; they belonged to the intellectual
new age, then dawning; rather than to the rude, fighting age which was
about to pass away. Francis was no accident. We can see in him the two
natures of his father and his mother--the commingling of the powerful,
practical, sagacious politician and man of affairs, with the studious,
contemplative, imaginative, affectionate, religious enthusiast.

His birthplace was a palace; the country seat of Gorhamsbury, near Saint
Al