f life and the
riches of deeply-pondered meditation on God and Christianity, as well as
knowledge of the world and the desirableness of its valued gifts. How
beautiful are his thoughts on death, on adversity, on glory, on anger,
on friendship, on fame, on ambition, on envy, on riches, on youth and
old age, and divers other subjects of moral import, which show the
elevation of his soul, and the subjective as well as the objective turn
of his mind; not dwelling on what he should eat and what he should drink
and wherewithal he should be clothed, but on the truths which appeal to
our higher nature, and which raise the thoughts of men from earth to
heaven, or at least to the realms of intellectual life and joy.

And then, it is necessary that we should take in view other labors which
dignified Bacon's retirement, as well as those which marked his more
active career as a lawyer and statesman,--his histories and biographies,
as well as learned treatises to improve the laws of England; his
political discourses, his judicial charges, his theological tracts, his
speeches and letters and prayers; all of which had relation to benefit
others rather than himself. Who has ever done more to instruct the
world,--to enable men to rise not in fortune merely, but in virtue and
patriotism, in those things which are of themselves the only reward? We
should consider these labors, as well as the new method he taught to
arrive at knowledge, in our estimate of the sage as well as of the man.
He was a moral philosopher, like Socrates. He even soared into the realm
of supposititious truth, like Plato. He observed Nature, like Aristotle.
He took away the syllogism from Thomas Aquinas,--not to throw contempt
on metaphysical inquiry or dialectical reasoning, but to arrive by a
better method at the knowledge of first principles; which once
established, he allowed deductions to be drawn from them, leading to
other truths as certainly as induction itself. Yea, he was also a Moses
on the mount of Pisgah, from which with prophetic eye he could survey
the promised land of indefinite wealth and boundless material
prosperity, which he was not permitted to enter, but which he had
bequeathed to civilization. This may have been his greatest gift in the
view of scientific men,--this inductive process of reasoning, by which
great discoveries have been made after he was dead. But this was not his
only legacy, for other things which he taught were as valuable, not