CXV111 LIFE OF BACON. 



for a time beyond the compass of its nest, it will mew them 

 soon after;&quot; and, in this spirit, he records various maxims to 

 counteract the debasement of character attendant upon the 

 worship of gold : and above all, the evil of sedentary and 

 within-door mechanical arts, requiring rather the finger 

 than the arm; which in Sparta, Athens, and Rome was left 

 to slaves, and amongst Christians should be the employment 

 of aliens, and not of the natives, who should be tillers of 

 ground, free servants, and labourers in strong and manly 

 arts. 



Such were the opinions of Bacon. How far they will 

 meet with the approbation of political economists in these 

 enlightened times, it is not necessary, in this analysis of his 

 sentiments, to inquire. If he is in error, he may, in the 

 infancy of the science of government, be pardoned for 

 supposing that the national character would not be elevated 

 by making sentient man a machine, or by those processes, 

 by which bones and sinews, life and all that adorns life, is 

 transmuted into gold. The bell by which the labourers 

 are summoned to these many windowed fabrics in our 

 manufacturing towns, sweeter to the lovers of gain than 

 holy bell that tolls to parish church, would have sounded 

 upon Bacon s ear with harsher import than the Norman 

 curfew, (a) He may be pardoned, though he should warn 

 us that in these temples, not of liberty, the national cha 

 racter will not be elevated by the employment of children, 

 not in the temper of Him who took them in his arms, put 

 his hands upon them and blessed them, but in never 

 ceasing labour, with their morals sapped and undermined, 

 their characters lowered and debased. It is possible that 

 if he had witnessed the cowering looks and creeping gait, 

 or shameless mirth of these little slaves, he might have 



() See William Wordsworth s noble poem, &quot;The Excursion.&quot; 



