ment during the
short and violent session of 1629, and before another Parliament was
called he had quitted life. He died in 1634, in the eighty-third year of
his age and in the full possession of his faculties. What he performed
for public liberty is seen; his claims to esteem as a lawyer were
recognized in his own time, and are still acknowledged. His publications
are the hand-books of our legal men. His general character may be
gathered from our short record. It is further to be noted that he had a
sublime contempt for science and literature of every kind. Upon the
title-page of his copy of the _Novum Organum_, presented to him by the
author, he wrote,

"It deserves not to be read in schooles,
But to be freighted in the _Ship of Fools_."

Shakspeare and Ben Jonson were _vagrants_, deserving of the stocks;
poetry was foolishness; law, politics, and money-making the sole
occupations worthy of a masculine and vigorous mind. "For a profound
knowledge of the common law of England," says the biographer, "he stands
unrivaled. As a judge he was above all suspicion of corruption; yet most
men," adds Lord Campbell, "I am afraid, would rather have been Bacon
than Coke." We participate in his Lordship's fear. Aware of the lax
period in which both flourished, we are willing to attribute many of
the faults of both to the age in which their lot was cast. Their virtues
and intellectual prowess were all then own; and let us once enter upon a
comparison of these, and the lofty, universal genius of Bacon will shine
as the noonday sun in the firmament where the duller orb of Coke shall
cease to be visible.

[From Household Words.]

FATHER AND SON.

One evening in the month of March, 1798--that dark time in Ireland's
annals whose memory (overlooking all minor subsequent _emeutes_) is
still preserved among us, as "the year of the rebellion"--a lady and
gentleman were seated near a blazing fire in the old-fashioned
dining-room of a large, lonely mansion. They had just dined; wine and
fruit were on the table, both untouched, while Mr. Hewson and his wife
sat silently gazing at the fire, watching its flickering light becoming
gradually more vivid as the short spring twilight faded into darkness.

At length the husband poured out a glass of wine, drank it off, and then
broke silence, by saying,

"Well, well, Charlotte, these are awful times; there were ten men taken
up to-day for burning Cotter's house at Knockane; and