The third event was the irruption of the Barbarians. That a higher civilization followed this every body knows; but how many centuries did it take to civilize the Barbarians?
Now these, the three great events of past history, are all dwarfed very much when compared with what we are now, doing. We are sending out every year, literally, hundreds of thousands of civilized men to people two continents in opposite hemispheres, and on opposite sides of the globe. In North America there are already twenty millions of our race. This population doubles every twenty-two years. Australia will inevitably become "the Queen of the South." Now that literature has given permanency to language, no other tongue than ours will ever be spoken upon these continents. We can see no limit to the spread of our laws, literature, and language. Greek and Roman greatness are really, in comparison, nothing to this. And, compared with the millions of civilized men which we have sent and are sending to occupy so large a portion of the earth's surface, how insignificant becomes the irruption of some savage, or half-savage hordes, into Italy, France, Spain, and England!
At a time when civilization is at a standstill, if not retrograding, upon the continent of Europe, it is very delightful, particularly to an Englishman, to have such a picture to contemplate.—Frazer's Magazine.
[From the London Times.]
LORD COKE AND LORD BACON.
Lord Campbell has devoted a considerable portion of his first volume of the Lives of the Chief Justices of England to the biography of Sir Edward Coke. The theme is worthy of the space afforded it. Independently of the professional renown of this great man, there are circumstances connected with his career that render it, perhaps, more deeply interesting than that of any other legal functionary. He began the world with the immortal Bacon; the two were rivals during life; they fought together for distinction, and were even competitors in love. Both were devoured by a raging desire for wealth and honors, both gained the objects of their fiery ambition, and neither found happiness when they were acquired. If Bacon was more unscrupulous than Coke in the ignoble race, his fall also was more fatal and ignominious. Both represent to our minds distinct forms of undoubted greatness. The Body of the Common Law of England is the type that speaks for Coke. The glory of human wisdom shines forever around the drooping head of Bacon. Both teach posterity how much intellectual grandeur may co-exist with the most glaring moral turpitude; both pay homage to virtue by seeking refuge in disgrace in the tranquil pursuits that have since immortalized them. Bacon, with a genius only less than angelic, condescends to paltry crime, and dies branded. Coke, with a profound contempt for the arts that Bacon loved, enraged by disappointment, takes revenge for neglect, and dies a patriot. In the days of Coke there would seem to have been a general understanding on the part of royal sycophants to mislead the monarch, and all became his sycophants who received his favors. Coke is no exception to the rule. It is true enough that to him we are mainly indebted for the movement which, beginning on the 30th of January, 1621, ended that very day eight-and-twenty years with the decapitation of the king; but it is likewise undeniable that the nation's difficulties would have waited some time longer for solution had not the defender of the people's rights been inoculated with a love of liberty by the sudden application of the royal lancet, whose sharp edge his judicious self-love would never have provoked. Coke was born in what a Royalist of the days of Charles the First might well have called "the good old times," when Queens were gentle despots and Parliaments the most devoted of self-constituted slaves; when Mr. Speaker "upon his allegiance was commanded, if a certain bill be exhibited, not to read it," and when "Mr. Vice-Chamberlain, to the great comfort of the Speaker and the House, brought answer of Her Majesty's acceptance of the submission" of legislators who had presumed to speak of matters "not proper and pertinent for the house to deal in." Elizabeth was on her splendid throne when Coke, having quitted the University of Cambridge without a degree, was working like a horse at Clifford's-inn. Stony-hearted and stony-minded, he loved neither poetry nor pleasure. From the moment he began the appointed task of his life, he dreamed of nothing but fame, and of that only for the sake of the sterling recompense it brings. Friendships not convertible to cash, Coke resolutely foreswore at the commencement of his career, and he was blessed with none at the close of it. Spenser yielded him no delight, Shakespeare no seduction. The study of law began at three in the morning, and, with short intervals of rest, ceased at nine in the evening, at which hour the indefatigable student at last took repose. Fortified by such discipline, and brim full of law, Coke was called to the bar in the year 1578, being then twenty-seven years of age, and he rose in his profession as rapidly as he had all along resolved to rise.
In pursuance of his design Coke married well in 1582; the lady was young, beautiful, and accomplished; virtues thrown, as it were, into the bargain, since the lawyer had been well satisfied with the ample fortune by which they were accompanied. Before he was thirty years old the desperate money-seeker had made himself master of manor upon manor, and laid the foundation of the enormous possessions which at length alarmed the Crown, lest they should prove too magnificent for a subject. In 1585 he was elected Recorder of Coventry, in 1586 of Norwich, and in 1592 of London itself. In the last-named year he was also appointed Reader in the Inner Temple by the Benchers, and in 1592, being in his forty-first year, by the influence of Burleigh, he was made Solicitor-General to the Queen. The solicitorship secured the Speakership of the House of Commons, according to custom. Coke in his address to the Queen upon his appointment compared himself to a star in the heavens, "which is but opacum corpus until it receiveth light from the sun." Her Majesty in answer graciously condescended to accept the metaphor, for she informed her humble Speaker that liberty of speech was granted him, "but you must know what privilege you have; not to speak every one what he listeth, or what cometh in his brain to utter, but your privilege is ay or no; wherefore, Mr. Speaker, Her Majesty's pleasure is, that if you perceive any idle heads which will meddle with reforming the church and transforming the commonwealth, and do exhibit bills to such purpose, you receive them not until they be viewed and considered by those who it is fitter should consider of such things, and can better judge of them." The times were sweetly Arcadian. Elizabeth should be painted a shepherdess, and her faithful Parliament a meek and timid flock about her.
The obsequiousness of Coke to his Royal mistress was in perfect keeping with his character. Nothing exceeds his abject servility while in the sunshine, save his fixed malignity when dismissed to the shade. In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant; Coke regarded the prize as his own until he found one ready to dispute it with him. Bacon, eager to outstrip his rival, had made interest at Court, and, had his age been as ripe as his genius, Coke might have been thrust aside in the encounter. Intrigues failed, because "one precedent of so raw a youth being promoted to so great a place" it was impossible to find. Coke was left master of the field, but neither combatant forgot the result of the contest. The new Attorney-General declined his marvelous opponent for Solicitor-General, and Bacon resolved to take unmeasured revenge both for the disappointment and the insult.