Bitterly feeling the disgrace of the parliamentary sentence, Bacon earnestly endeavoured to obtain a total remission of it, so that he might not die in dishonour. The good,' said he, which the commonwealth might reap of my suffering, is already inned. Justice is done; an example is made for reformation; the authority of the House for judicature is established. There can be no farther use of my misery. Time hath turned envy into pity.' His appeal to king James, in July, 1624, is expressed in terms so painfully pathetic, that no one, we think, who has any feeling, or any sympathy for fallen greatness, can read it without emotion:-'I prostrate myself,' said Bacon, 'at your majesty's feet-I, your ancient servant, now sixty-four years old in age, and three years and five months old in misery. I desire not from your majesty means, nor place, nor employment; but only, after so long a time

* Bacon's Works, vol. 12, pp. 456, 463.

of expiation, a complete and total remission of the sentencce of the Upper House, to the end that blot of ignominy may be removed from me, and from my memory with posterity, that I die not a condemned man. This my most humble request granted, may make me live a year or two happily; and denied, will kill me quickly." .* Shortly afterwards, the King granted him a full pardon of the whole sentence,† and he subsequently received his writ for Parliament, but by reason of his broken health was unable to attend.

His life, indeed, was now rapidly drawing to an end. In the spring of 1626, whilst taking the air in his coach, in the neighbourhood of Highgate, accompanied with Dr. Witherborne, the King's physician, it suddenly occurred to Bacon-there being snow upon the ground-to try the experiment, whether flesh could be preserved in snow. Accordingly, he and his companion forthwith

* Bacon's Works, vol. 12, p. 72.

+ Ib. vol. 13, p. 70.

alighted, went into a poor woman's house at the bottom of Highgate hill, and bought a hen; and having made the woman exenterate it, they stuffed the body with snow, lord Bacon himself assisting. The snow so chilled him, that he immediately fell extremely ill, and could not return to his lodgings at Gray's Inn, but was carried to the earl of Arundell's house at Highgate, and there put into a warmed bed, which is said, however, to have been damp, not having been used for a year before.* From this place he sent the following (his last) letter to the earl of Arundel and Surrey :

'My very good lord,—I was likely to have had the fortune of Cajus Plinius the elder, who lost his life by trying an experiment about the burning of the mountain Vesuvius. For I was also desirous to try an experiment or two, touching the conservation and induration of bodies. As for the experiment

* Aubrey, vol. 2, p. 227. He had his information from Hobbes.

itself, it succeeded excellently well; but in the journey (between London and Highgate,) I was taken with such a fit of casting, as I know not whether it were the stone, or some surfeit, or cold, or indeed a touch of them all three. But when I came to your lordship's house, I was not able to go back, and therefore was forced to take up my lodging here, where your house-keeper is very careful and diligent about me, which I assure myself your lordship will not only pardon towards him, but think the better of him for it. For indeed your lordship's house was happy to me; and I kiss your noble hands for the welcome which I am sure you give me to it.

'I know how unfit it is for me to write to your lordship with any other hand than my own; but by my troth, my fingers are so disjointed with this fit of sickness, that I cannot steadily hold a pen.'*

* Bacon's Works, vol. 12, p. 274.

X

In a few days after dictating this letter, lord Bacon breathed his last. He died,' says Dr. Rawley-who boasted of having been his first and last chaplain' on the ninth day of April, in the year 1626, in the early morning of the day then celebrated for our Saviour's resurrection, in the sixtysixth year of his age, at the earl of Arundell's house in Highgate, near London, to which place he casually repaired about a week before, God so ordaining that he should die there of a gentle fever, accidentally accompanied with a great cold, whereby the defluxion of rheum fell so plentifully upon his breast, that he died of suffocation.'

From this account it appears, that the malady which so rapidly brought Bacon to the grave, was an inflammation of the air-cells of the lungs, now called 'bronchitis.' This disease (the pathology of which was then not understood,) most commonly occasions the death of old persons. In cases of this

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