bull-baiting, so common in some countries, and but lately abolished in
England.

[Illustration: HEAD OF THE BULL-DOG.]

[Illustration]

* * * * *




LORD BACON.


[Illustration: Letter I.]

In those prescient views by which the genius of Lord Bacon has often
anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding times,
there was one important object which even his foresight does not appear
to have contemplated. Lord Bacon did not foresee that the English
language would one day be capable of embalming all that philosophy can
discover, or poetry can invent; that his country would at length possess
a national literature of its own, and that it would exult in classical
compositions, which might be appreciated with the finest models of
antiquity. His taste was far unequal to his invention. So little did he
esteem the language of his country, that his favourite works were
composed in Latin; and he was anxious to have what he had written in
English preserved in that "universal language which may last as long as
books last."