(as indeed all substance is spiritual); but whatever power
or force such an organization of body might be able to ex-
ercise upon other spiritual bodies of like nature and con-
stitution, it is clear that if it be so thin and ethereal as to
be invisible to the microscope, and wholly imperceptible to
the most delicate scientific tests of the presence of matter
or force, it would be utterly absurd to imagine it could, by
any conceivable possibility, so rap a table at the will of a
spirit soul as to produce a vibration in solid wood, or in so
dense a fluid as the air, which is the only medium of sound
to the ear, any more than could the imaginary hand of an
impossibly visible ghost. Both our eyes and our ears are
forever closed to any such agency, and our souls and our
senses alike are happily inaccessible to all such communi-
cations:
: so says Hamlet:

"And for my soul, what can it do to that,
Being a thing immortal as itself?"

Honest ghosts have scarcely been suspected of such impossibilities: even the ghost of Hamlet's father, that " perturbed spirit," old truepenny, "the fellow i' the cellarage," that was "hic et ubique," and could "work i' the earth" like a mole, knew better than to undertake to rap anything. He only ventured to speak aloud; and even that voice was never heard by mortal ear until uttered by some living medium under the stage. Even when poetically visible, face to face with Hamlet, he cut a long story short with this sensible speech:

"But that I am forbid

To tell the secrets of my prison-house,

I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end,

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:

But this eternal blazon must not be

To ears of flesh and blood." - Act I. Sc. 5.

And all spiritual rappers will know better, when they

have learned more, than to undertake any such performance: that work belongs only to poets. In the mean time, all may rest assured, that in literal truth this "eternal blazon" must not be, and, in the order of Divine Providence in the known world, cannot be, to "ears of flesh and blood." The universe is neither made nor governed so, nor are men to be instructed here in that way; and the sooner all rappers find this out, the better it may be for them, both here and hereafter. There should be established for their use "houses of deceits of the senses, all manner of feats of juggling, false apparitions, impostures, and illusions, and their fallacies;" and they should beware of the fate and the curse of Macbeth.

§ 5. REVERENCE AND DEgree.

That sprightly antithesis of Pope, straining a truth to point his wit,

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,"

like much other wit and many old saws, contains more point than truth; and as is usual, when vulgar satire flings its envenomed shafts at what is nobler than itself, the slander is apt to stick better than the truth. Bacon was not the meanest of mankind. He was not mean at all, unless by some mean standard of meanness, but one of the loftiest and noblest of his time, as well as one of the wisest and brightest of all time. That he partook in some measure of the abuses of the time, and shared the faults of good men in all times, need not be denied. He was not a martyr, nor a hero, in any ordinary sense; but in a very extraordinary sense, he might be found to have been both. He did not attempt impracticabilities, nor absurd impossibilities; but he was certainly one of those "clearest burning lamps,” 1 and

"clearest gods, who make them honors Of men's impossibilities ";

1 Bacon.

"which, nevertheless," says he, "it seemeth they propound rather as impossibilities and wishes than as things within the compass of human comprehension." 1

Without stopping, now, to extenuate his faults, such as they were (and they have been enormously magnified), it may be remembered here, that he was wiser than to break his own head against the dead stone walls and brazen idols of the age in which he lived. He knew it was better to set the slow hand of all-conquering Time at work upon them, and he did more than any other of his time toward contriving the plans, indicating the ways, inventing the means, and constructing the ideal engines and instruments for their demolition. He made a virtue of necessity, perhaps, and adapted himself as well as he could to the medium in which his life was cast; and he made use of the materials and instruments that were at hand for such uses as they were fit for, and for objects, ends, and aims, far higher, nobler, and better, than was dreamed of by many in his own time, or even by a large portion of posterity down to this day. Comparatively speaking, he lived in an age of darkness and despotism, not in an age of light and liberty. His "Genius" could not have "the air of freedom"; and this he well knew. Hamlet gives sage advice:

Unpeg the basket on the house's top,

Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape,

To try conclusions in the basket creep,

And break your own neck down.". Act III. Sc. 4.

Sovereignty, in that age, resided in the king, not in the people, and if he may be judged by his writings, it was certainly not Bacon's fault, if the reigning sovereign were not really as wise as Solomon and a true vicegerent of the Divine Majesty; for he taught that kings "be live gods on earth," as the play also teaches:

1 Valerius Terminus.

"Kings are earth's gods; in vice their law 's their will,
And if Jove stray, who dares say Jove doth ill?"

And again thus, in the "Richard II." :—

"Boling.
I pardon him.
Duch.

With all my heart

Per., Act I. Sc. 1

A god on Earth thou art.". - Act V. Sc. 3.

And again in the "Rape of Lucrece":—

"Thou seemest not what thou art, a god, a king,

For kings like gods should govern everything."

He had to take "the age and body of the time, his form and pressure," for what it was, as he found it, believing, perhaps, with the play, again, that

"All places that the eye of heaven visits

Are to the wise man ports and happy havens.

Teach thy necessity to reason thus;

There is no virtue like necessity." —Rich. II., Act I. Sc. 3.

In Euripides, the same doctrine stands thus:— "Wise men have said, (it is no speech of mine,) There's nothing stronger, or more terrible

Than dire necessity."— Helene, 512–14.

Probably, Bacon alluded to this very passage, when he said, "It was said among the ancients, Necessitatem ex omnibus rebus esse fortissimum'"1 (Necessity is the strongest of all things). And it is repeated in this same play, thus:

:

And again, the same idea appears in the second part of the Henry IV.," thus:

66

"K. Hen. Are these things, then, necessities?

Then let us meet them like necessities." -Act III. Sc. 1.

And there may be some truth in the sonnet, as applied to himself:

"T is better to be vile, than vile esteem'd,
When not to be receives reproach of being,

1 De Aug. Scient., Lib. VIII.

And the just pleasure lost, which is so deem'd,
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level

At my abuses reckon up their own:

I may be straight, though they themselves be bevel;
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shewn,

Unless this general evil they maintain,

All men are bad, and in their badness reign.". Son. cxxi.

And this, again, would seem to echo almost the very words of Helene in Euripides, which, being interpreted, run nearly thus :

Being no way unjust, I am disgrac'd,

And this, to whomsoever comes reproach

Of evil deeds, belonging not to him,

Is worse than all the vileness of the truth."- Helene, 270–3.

Even victorious Cæsar, in the play, could speak in praise of the fallen Antony, admire his greatness, and lament his fate; and Antony could think the Egyptian Cleopatra "thrice nobler than himself, when, forgetting all her human frailties, he exclaimed, as he imitated her example, and fell upon his own sword,

"My queen and Eros

Have, by their brave instruction, got upon me

A nobleness in record."— Ant. and Cleo., Act IV. Sc. 12.

As Bacon says, "at best, nobleness is never lost, but rewarded in itself." 1 And reading the "Antony and Cleopatra" from the high philosophic point of view of Plato's Republic, some touch of this same nobleness may be discovered in it:

"Ant. Let Rome in Tyber melt, and the wide arch
Of the rang'd empire fall! Here is my space.
Kingdoms are clay: our dungy earth alike
Feeds beast as man: the nobleness of life

Is to do thus; when such a mutual pair,

1 Letter, 1623.