74 LETTERS FROM THE CABALA. 



province of learning, and (that which is more) you have 

 added to your place affection towards learning, and to your 

 affection judgment, of which the last I could be content were 

 (for the time) less, that you might the less exquisitely cen 

 sure that which I offer to you. But sure I am, the argu 

 ment is good, if it had lighted upon a good author; but I 

 shall content myself to awake better spirits, like a bell- 

 ringer which is first up, to call others to church. So, with 

 my humble desire of your lordship s good acceptation, I 

 remain, 



The Lord Chancellor Bacon to the Lords. 



It may please your Lordships, 



I shall humbly crave at your lordships hands a benign 

 interpretation of that which 1 shall now write ; for words 

 that come from wasted spirits, and an oppressed mind, are 

 more safe in being deposited in a noble construction, than 

 in being circled with any reserved caution. Having made 

 this as a protection to all which I shall say, 1 will go on, 

 but with a very strange entrance (as may seem to your 

 lordships at the first ;) for in the midst of a state of as 

 great affliction as I think a mortal man can endure, (honour 

 being above life) I shall begin with the professing gladness 

 in some things. 



The first is, that hereafter the greatness of a judge or 

 magistrate shall be no sanctuary, or protection to him 

 against guiltiness ; which, in few words, is the beginning of 

 a golden world. 



The next, that after this example, it is like that judges 

 will fly from any thing in the likeness of corruption, (though 

 it were at a great distance) as from a serpent; which 

 tendeth to the purging of the courts of justice, and re 

 ducing them to their true honour and splendour. And in 

 these two points, God is my witness, (though it be my 

 fortune to be the anvil, upon which these good effects are 



