an Egyptian bondage to stimulate you to exertion. Why, the very busts around reproach you: look on the three opposite:—was the debt of gratitude, which men are now paying, by imitation and honourable mention, to these, won by indolent seclusion?"
A sickly smile passed over Etheringhame's fine but wan features, as he said, "You are happy, really, Edward, in the encouragement of your illustrations—Bacon, Milton, and Sydney: the first adventured into public life but to show his insufficiency to withstand its temptations; the second dragged on old age in fear, poverty, and obscurity; the third perished on a scaffold."
Edward Lorraine.—"I must give up my first: Bacon is one of the most humiliating examples of man's subservience to circumstances: he lived in an era of bribery and fraud; and he whose mind was so far in advance of his age, was, alas! in his actions but its copy. Much must be ascribed to his early education among corrupt and time-serving courtiers—the evil with which we are familiar seems scarce an evil: but even his example has a sort of hope in its warning to those who hope the best of their nature. How little
