the statues surrounding the one of Friedrich Wilhelm on the great bridge at Berlin.—R. M.
BACKHOUSE, John, under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, receiver-general of excise, born at Liverpool, and son of John Backhouse, a merchant of that town. About 1812 he was appointed by the commercial bodies of his native town their agent in London for the protection of the trading privileges of Liverpool. This led to his acquaintance with George Canning, then member for the town, who in a few years appointed Mr. Backhouse his private secretary. Through Mr. Canning's interest, he was appointed in 1822 to a clerkship to the India board, which office he resigned after two years on being made a commissioner of excise. In 1827 he was appointed receiver-general of that department, and about the same time he was advanced to the office of under-secretary for foreign affairs, which appointment he held for sixteen years. He edited the "Narration of Robert Adam's Residence in the Interior of Africa," &c., and wrote frequently in some of the periodicals. He died at Chelsea, November 13, 1845.—T. F.
BACKMEISTER, Hartmann Ludwig Christian, a German historian, born in 1736; became principal of the German college at St. Petersburg in 1770. He wrote a history of Sweden, memoirs of Peter I., and other works which contributed greatly to the progress of letters in the Russian empire.
BACLER D'ALBE, Louis Albert Ghislain, a French painter, engineer, and topographer, who, from a retreat among the Alps, which he had chosen for the prosecution of his labours as a painter, was summoned by Napoleon at the commencement of his first Italian campaign, to assume the direction of the bureau topographique; and who, following the fortunes of the emperor, earned by his courage under arms, and his ingenious and indefatigable labours in the particular service to which he belonged, a high rank among soldiers, as well as among artists. He was born at Saint Pol in the department of Pas-de-Calais, in 1762, and died at Sevres in 1824. He became adjutant-commandant in 1807, and in 1813 general of brigade. His paintings, the more ambitious subjects of which were drawn from the campaigns in which he served, are remarked for the same beauty of drawing which characterized his exquisite topographical sketches. He published "Annales Pittoresques et Historiques de Paysagistes," &c., 1803; "Souvenirs Pittoresques ou Vues Lithographiées de la Suisse du Valais," &c., 1818; "Souvenirs Pittoresques, contenant la campagne d'Espagne," 1824; "Promenades Pittoresques dans Paris et ses Environs;" and "Vues Pittoresques du haut Faucigny."—J. S., G.
BACON, Anna, wife of Nicolas Bacon, keeper of the seals, and mother of the celebrated philosopher, Francis, was the daughter of Anthony Cook, tutor to Edward VI. She was a woman of remarkable accomplishments, and to her Francis owed the greatest part of his early education. A translation by Anna Bacon of Jewel's Apology for the Church of England, was published in 1564.
BACON, Anthony, eldest son of Sir Nicolas Bacon, lord-keeper to Queen Elizabeth, by his first wife, and half-brother to the celebrated Lord Bacon, was born in 1558, and educated at Cambridge. He was personally acquainted with most of the learned men of that age, and at Geneva he lodged in the house of Theodore Beza. In 1585 he visited Henry of Navarre, then at Berne. Here he became acquainted with Lambertus Danæus, who dedicated several of his works to him. In 1586 he formed an intimacy with Philip Plessis de Mornay at Montaubon. In 1591 he returned to England.—T. F.
BACON, Francis. Of our renowned intellectual names there are only two, or at most three, others that, even with his own countrymen, rank before or beside that of Bacon; in the estimation of Europe he is incontestably the most illustrious of Englishmen. Shakspeare and Milton are (like all poets) for their own language only; Newton (like all men of science) is of no language or land; Bacon alone belongs at once to his own country and to every other.
The space that he fills as an actor on the stage of life may be said to extend over the last quarter of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, comprehending more than half the reign of Elizabeth and the whole of that of her successor. He was born on the 22nd of January, 1561 (according to our modern reckoning), at York house, London, so called as being properly the town mansion of the archbishops of York, but at this date the pleasant residence on the north bank of the Thames, not far from Charing Cross, of his father Sir Nicolas Bacon, who held the great seal, with the title of Lord-keeper, throughout nearly the first half of the reign of Elizabeth. He was the younger of the two sons of Sir Nicolas by his second wife Anne, the second of the four, or, as some accounts say, five (one goes the length of six) learned daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, all of whom made good marriages (as well as, we are assured, good wives). That of the eldest with Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, connected Bacon with what was throughout the reign of Elizabeth, although a new family, yet the most powerful in the kingdom. His brother of the whole blood, Anthony, appears to have been his senior by about three years, and he had three half-brothers and as many half-sisters, who were all married once, twice, or thrice. The light that was within him early began to show itself, and to attract attention and admiration. Elizabeth herself, we are told, delighted to converse with the wise and ready boy, and would call him her young lord-keeper. He appears never to have been at any school, but to have been educated at home, possibly under the superintendence of his learned mother, till, when his brother Anthony went to the university, he, although so much younger, was sent up to Cambridge along with him, and entered of Trinity college. This was in 1573, when he had not yet completed his thirteenth year; and he left at sixteen, thus getting through all the formal education he ever had a considerable time before the age at which it is now customary to go to college. This peculiar training is eminently worth noting in reference to what he afterwards became. Was it the scheme of his mother, herself in like manner educated at home by or under the eye of her own father, and likely, both from temper and upon principle, to be no great friend either of public schools or of colleges? Bacon never became what is called a learned man; his mere scholarship perhaps may be thought to show something of a feminine character in its entire texture and spirit; still, although deficient both in extent and in depth, it is superior of its kind, and has the readiness and practical applicability commonly belonging to woman's wit, and also eminently in accordance with the general nature of his own genius and intellect. It may be questioned if a more masculine institution in learning would have proved more serviceable to him either instrumentally or in nourishing his native powers. His first biographer. Dr. Rawley, informs us, on Bacon's own authority, that it was while resident at the university that "he first fell into the dislike of the philosophy of Aristotle;" "not," it is added, "for the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ever ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy, as his lordship used to say, only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of the life of man; in which mind he continued till his dying day." In a letter written in 1623 or 1624 Bacon speaks of having about forty years before written an exposition of his method of philosophy, to which he had given the magnificent title of "Temporis Partus Maximus" (the Greatest Birth of Time). This would be within seven or eight years after he left the university. Lord Campbell asserts that the sketch in question was published, although "it seems," he says, "to have fallen still-born from the press;" but that fact is unknown to all Bacon's other biographers.
On leaving Cambridge, apparently in 1576, the boy, who, with his college education finished, and his head filled with what he believed to be a new philosophy, must have felt himself already a man, was sent to Paris under the care of Sir Amyas Paulet, the English minister, and he remained in France till the death of his father in February, 1579, possibly for some months longer. Meanwhile he had in November, 1576 (which may, after all, have been before he went abroad), been entered a student of Gray's inn; he and his four brothers (some of whom must have been as much beyond as he was within the usual age) were all entered on the same day. On his return to England he appears to have applied himself forthwith to the study of the law. As the son of a judge, he had the privilege of an abridged course; and he was called to the bar, as we now say, or became what in those days was designated an outer barrister, in 1582. All that need farther be noted here of his early advancement in his profession is that in 1586, probably through the influence of his uncle the lord-treasurer, he appears to have been called within the bar, and to have become a bencher of his inn; and that in 1588 he was elected Lent reader.
But he had also some years before made his entry upon a
