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have soon overtaken them, and have had ample revenge, as he could swim three times faster than they.

They immediately ran to the house for guns, and when they came back, saw him sitting in the boat, and dipping one of his paws now and then in the water, and washing his wounds; on which, levelling their pieces, they fhot him dead.

The landlord of the house I put up at, when this story was told, fhewed me one of the paws of this bear, which, on account of its great size, he kept as a fhow; and added, that he was as big as any yearling calf. So that one may easily conceive the havock and destruction committed in a country so much infested with such monstrous and ravenous animals, especially on fheep, the simplest and silliest of all creatures, who fall an easy prey to beasts of far lefs strength and size. Many of these harmless, yet useful animals, were destroyed by bears in this very neighbourhood; where one man sustained the lofs of thirty of his sheep within a fhort space; and even young cattle often were devoured, and carried off by them; yet they prefer swine, when they can get them, to any other meat.

SIR,

FRAGMENTS OF LORD BACON.

INTRODUCTORS LETTER.

To the Editor of the Bee.

DURING one of my late pedestrian journeis, to examine and glean the beauties and curiosities of this interesting island of Britain, I happened to be enter

tained at the house of a venerable old widow lady, in the county of Brecknock, the heirefs of a small Highland estate, to which fhe had unluckily failed in bringing an heir.

In her hospitable, but decaying mansion, there was a portrait upon board, of no great excellence, save for its being an original of the great lord Bacon.

As I was gazing with great eagerness on this portrait, the good lady said to me, "You seem Sir to be a great admirer of lord Bacon, when you can fix so ravenously upon that poor picture of his person."

Madam, (replied I,) how can I but doat upon the shell that contained such a wonderful kernel!"

My grandfather (rejoined the lady,) by my mother's side of the house, was a Rawley; and from him this picture came down to me, with a box of old papers, most of which have been used in the family for domestic purposes, as they lay all higgledy piggledy, and seemed to be nothing but jottings, and in a hand quite illegible. However, I gathered from these papers, that they were gotten at: the same time with the picture, as the parson could here and there decypher, in the antick writing, the names of Bacon and Rawley; so I used no more of these papers, but made the parson look more attentively at them, who advised me to keep them, as they might contain some hints about my estate; and that he could trace out somewhat that seemed to relate to the good estate of the church." Upon this, I asked the lady's permifsion to examine the box, which the very frankly granted.

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I had no sooner examined a few of the loose papers, which lay in chaotic confusion, than, to my great joy, I found severa!s, that, from their contexture, appeared to be parts of an essay on the art of life, and that they bore the strongest marks of the stile of the illustrious lord Bacon.

Stung with the most violent curiosity, and animated in my research by what I had seen, I intreated my kind hostess, to allow me, in her presence, or in the presence of the parson, to examine the whole mafs, to which the readily conserted; and the worthy clergyman waved his presence, on my promising him, upon my honour, if I found any thing relating to ecclesiastical affairs, in respect of tythes, that I would lay them aside, and transcribe them from the manuscripts.

Having seen much of the hand writing of Sir Francis Bacon, in the British museum, among Dr Birch's manuscripts, and in the Lambeth library, I looked all over, the papers for the hand writing or signature of the philosopher, but found none, save two or three times on the margin, and in the interlineations.

As I observed morsels relating to a variety of subjects, I took one at a venture, with a view to find whether it might belong to any of the published efsays of lord Bacon, and I chanced to light upon this, which with some slight differences, is in his fifteenth of the edited essays.

"The part of Epimetheus mought well become Prometheus in the cases of discontentments; for there not a better provision or antidote against them,

"Epimetheus, when griefs and querulous evils were flying abroad, gave them free ifsue from the vefsel, and then heeffhut the lid and kept hope at the bottom."

Delighted with this coincidence, I earnestly sought for something of complete contexture, or at least sufficient to indicate the title and nature of the subject, that I might follow it out; for I observed that there were no running titles, or catch words on the margin, to facilitate the recovery of the tissue. After nine or ten hours indefatigable work, in turning over and over all the scraps, I got at last together the fragments of the efsay on the Art of Life, which, from its stile, I suppose to have been intended for one of "The Efsayes and Counsels, Civil and Moral;" and that it had been intended to be greatly enlarged, there being the following note, in the hand of the writer of the manuscript, on the margin of the piece upon Economy: "This my lord intendeth to dilate and elucidate with tabills, pourtraying various modifications of expence."

Now for the fragments, which I clafs under the various subjects of them in their order, viz.

1st, Art of preserving and improving · bodily health and strength.

2dly, Art of obtaining and preserving the habits of industry.

3dly, Art of acquiring and preserving a permanent reputation in domestic and social inter

course.

4thly, Art of regulating expences, with due but splendid economy,

5thly, In the rational, useful, and amusing employment of leisure.

6thly, In urbanity and politeness of manners, with due regard to our own interests.

7thly, In the habit of attention and observation, with respect to the operations of nature, and of society.

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8thly, In the cultivation of such habits as terminate in an amiable, tranquil, and respectable old age.

9thly, And lastly, in a philosophical and religious preparation for death.

FRAGMENTS OF LORD BACON.

Art of Life.

It was a wise saying of the prince of physicians, and worthy of especiall note, that errors, in the first concoction, are seldom to be removed by a second; and soe it is in the regiment of health.

Habits of eating, drinking, and other corporeal pleasures, being once established by frequent usage, are with great difficulty superseded by others that are more salutiferous; which difficulty is exaggerated by the well known propenseness of youthful natures to food of a sapid or high flavoured quality, to liquors that are potent or saccharine, and to pleasures of all kinds that are violent.

The foundation, or plattform, therefore, of the art of life, must have been laid, I will not saye in the craddle, but certainly in the nursery of children, by judicious parents, and wise preceptors; who, by inclining their pupills to the uncontaminated use of

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