n's influence common even among mathematicians and
experimental philosophers, have lowered the glory of the great man whom it
was, many will think, their business to defend through thick and thin. They
have given a clearer notion of his {89} excellencies, and a better idea of
the power of his mind, than ever we saw given before. Such a correction as
theirs must have come, and soon, for as Hallam says--after noting that the
_Novum Organum_ was _never published separately in England_, Bacon has
probably been more read in the last thirty years--now forty--than in the
two hundred years which preceded. He will now be more read than ever he
was. The history of the intellectual world is the history of the worship of
one idol after another. No sooner is it clear that a Hercules has appeared
among men, than all that imagination can conceive of strength is attributed
to him, and his labors are recorded in the heavens. The time arrives when,
as in the case of Aristotle, a new deity is found, and the old one is
consigned to shame and reproach. A reaction may afterwards take place, and
this is now happening in the case of the Greek philosopher. The end of the
process is, that the opposing deities take their places, side by side, in a
Pantheon dedicated not to gods, but to heroes.

THE REAL VALUE OF BACON'S WORKS.

Passing over the success of Bacon's own endeavors to improve the details of
physical science, which was next to nothing, and of his method as a whole,
which has never been practised, we might say much of the good influence of
his writings. Sound wisdom, set in sparkling wit, must instruct and amuse
to the end of time: and, as against error, we repeat that Bacon is soundly
wise, so far as he goes. There is hardly a form of human error within his
scope which he did not detect, expose, and attach to a satirical metaphor
which never ceases to sting. He is largely indebted to a very extensive
reading; but the thoughts of others fall into his text with such a
close-fitting compactness that he can make even the words of the Sacred
Writers pass for his own. A saying of the prophet Daniel, rather a
hackneyed quotation in our day, _Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur
scientia_, stands in the title-page of the first edition {90} of Montucla's
_History of Mathematics_ as a quotation from Bacon--and it is not the only
place in which this mistake occurs. When the truth of the matter, as to
Bacon's system, is fully recognized, we have l