young Bacon conversed, and what experiences of discipline befell him; but his subsequent achievements at least suggest that Cambridge in the sixteenth century may have afforded more efficient educational influences than our knowledge of its resources and methods can explain.  For it is certain that, at an age when our most promising youths are beginning serious study, Bacon’s mind was already formed, his habits and modes of research were fixed, the universe of knowledge was an open field before him.  Thenceforth he was no man’s pupil, but in intellectual independence and solitude he rapidly matured into the supreme scholar of his age.

After registering as a student of law at Gray’s Inn, apparently for the purpose of a nominal connection with a profession which might aid his patrons in promoting him at court, Bacon was sent in June, 1576, to France in the train of the British Ambassador, Sir Amyas Paulet; and for nearly three years followed the roving embassy around the great cities of that kingdom.  The massacre of St. Bartholomew had taken place four years before, and the boy’s recorded observations on the troubled society of France and of Europe show remarkable insight into the character of princes and the sources of political movements.  Sir Nicholas had hitherto directed his son’s education and associations with the purpose of making him an ornament of the court, and had set aside a fund to provide Francis at the proper time with a handsome estate.  But he died suddenly, February 20th, 1579, without giving legal effect to this provision, and the sum designed for the young student was divided equally among the five children, while Francis was excluded from a share in the rest of the family fortune; and was thus called home to England to find himself a poor man.

He made himself a bachelor’s home at Gray’s Inn, and devoted his energies to the law, with such success that he was soon recognized as one of the most promising members of the profession.  In 1584 he entered Parliament for Melcombe Regis in Somersetshire, and two years later sat for Liverpool.  During these years the schism between his inner and his outer life continued to widen.  Drawing his first breath in the atmosphere of the court, bred in the faith that honor and greatness come from princes’ favor, with a native taste for luxury and magnificence which was fostered by delicate health, he steadily looked for advancement through the influence of Burghley and the smiles of the Queen.  But Burghley had no sympathy with speculative thought, and distrusted him for his confidences concerning his higher studies, while he probably feared in Bacon a dangerous rival of his own son; so that with expressions of kind interest, he refrained from giving his nephew practical aid.  Elizabeth, too, suspected that a young man who knew so many things could not be trusted to know his own business well, and preferred for important professional work others who were lawyers and nothing besides.