er of the great Lord
Bacon wrote bitterly to his brother Anthony--"Tho' I pity your brother,
yet so long as he pities not himself, but keepeth that bloody PEREZ,
yea, as a coach-companion and bed-companion, a proud, profane, costly
fellow, whose being about him I verily fear the Lord God doth mislike,
and doth less bless your brother in credit, and otherwise in his health,
surely I am utterly discouraged, and make conscience further to undo
myself to maintain such wretches as he is, that never loved your
brother but for his own credit, living upon him."

This dark portrait, even from the pencil of maternal anxiety, is not
overcharged with shade. A few words, which could not have been uttered
by the Lady Bacon except as a prophetess, we may add in reference to the
meeting of the famous Englishman and the notorious Spaniard. At that
moment the public life of Francis Bacon was faintly dawning. The future
Minister of State and Chancellor of England had just entered the House
of Commons, and was whining for promotion at the gate of the royal
favourite. The mean subservience of his nature was to be afterwards
developed in its repulsive fulness. His scheming ambition saw itself far
away from the ermine of justice, doomed to be spotted by his corruption.
He had not then betrayed, and brought to the scaffold, and slandered his
benefactor. The power and honours of which he was to be stripped, were
yet to be won. His glory and his shame alike were latent. He was
beginning hazardously a career of brilliant and dismal vicissitudes, to
finish it with a halo of immortal glory blazing round his name.

But such a career along a strange parallelism of circumstances, although
with a gloomier conclusion, Antonio Perez had already run. The
unscrupulous confidant and reckless tool of a crafty and vindictive
tyrant, he had wielded vast personal authority, and guided the movements
of an immense empire.

"Antonio Perez, secretary of state," said one of his
contemporaries, "is a pupil of Ruy Gomez. He is very discreet and
amiable, and possesses much authority and learning. By his
agreeable manners, he goes on tampering and disguising much of the
disgust which people would feel at the king's slowness and sordid
parsimony. Through his hands have passed all the affairs of Italy,
and also those of Flanders, ever since this country has been
governed by Don Juan, who promotes his interests greatly, as do,