FRIENDS DEPARTED.

THEY are all gone into the world of light,
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast
Like stars upon some gloomy grove,
Or those faint beams in which this hill is drest
After the sun's remove.

I see them walking in an air of glory,
Whose light doth trample on my days—
My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,
Mere glimmerings and decays.

O holy hope and high humility!

High as the heavens above!

These are your walks, and you have showed them me, To kindle my cold love.

Dear, beauteous Death! the jewel of the just !

Shining nowhere but in the dark;

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know

At first sight if the bird be flown;

But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.

And yet, as Angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.

If a star were confined into a tomb,

Her captive flames must needs burn there :

But, when the hand that locked her up gives room,
She'll shine through all the sphere.

O Father of eternal life, and all

Created glories under Thee!

Resume Thy spirit from this world of thrall
Into true liberty.

Either disperse these mists, which blot and fill
My perspective still as they pass ;

Or else remove me hence unto that hill
Where I shall need no glass.

H. VAUGHAN.

OF STUDIES.

STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots, and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules is the humour of a scholar. They perfect Nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies ; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict

and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books: else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit; and if he read little, he had need have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the Mathematics subtle; Natural Philosophy deep; Moral grave; Logic and Rhetoric able to contend. There is no stand or impediment in the wit, but may be wrought out by fit studies: like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the Mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen, for they are 'splitters of hairs.' If he be not apt to beat over matters and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the Lawyer's cases; so every defect of the mind have had special Receipt.

FRANCIS BACON.

OF NATURE IN MEN.

NATURE is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. Force maketh Nature more violent in the return; doctrine and discourse maketh nature less importune; but

custom only doth alter and subdue Nature. He that seeketh victory over his nature, let him not set himself too great nor too small tasks for the first will make him dejected by often failings, and the second will make him a small proceeder, though by often prevailings. And at the first, let him practise with helps, as swimmers do with bladders or rushes; but after a time, let him practise with disadvantages, as dancers do with thick shoes: for it breeds great perfection if the practice be harder than the use. Where Nature is mighty, and therefore the victory hard, the degrees had need be ;-first to stay and arrest Nature in time; like to him that would say over the four-and-twenty letters when he was angry: then to go less in quantity; as if one should, in forbearing wine, come from drinking healths to a draught at a meal: and lastly to discontinue altogether. But if a man have the fortitude and resolution to enfranchise himself at once, that is the best. Neither is the ancient rule amiss, to bend Nature as a wand to a contrary extreme, whereby to set it right: understanding it where the contrary extreme is no vice. Let not a man force a habit upon himself with a perpetual continuance, but with some intermission. For both the pause reinforceth the new onset; and if a man that is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall as well practise his errors as his abilities, and induce one habit of both; and there is no means to help this but seasonable intermissions. But let not a man trust his victory over his Nature too far; for Nature will lie buried a great time, and yet revive upon the occasion, or temptation. Like as it was with Æsop's damsel, turned from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the board's end till a mouse ran before her. Therefore, let a man either avoid the occasion altogether, or put himself often to it, that he may be little moved with it.

A man's nature is best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts; and in a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him. In studies, whatsoever a man commandeth

himself upon himself, let him set hours for it: but whatsoever is agreeable to his nature, let him take no care for any set times; for his thoughts will fly to it of themselves; so as the spaces of other business or studies will suffice. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one, and destroy the other.

FRANCIS BACON.

THE FUNCTION OF A UNIVERSITY.

It

IF a practical end must be assigned to a university course, it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius on the other. Works, indeed, of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a university is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content, on the other hand, with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope.

But a university training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlargement and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourse of private life. It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to