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ellent maxims which he laid down for the proper conduct of experimental philosophy have outlived his own facts and system and peculiar beliefs. Thus he has fitly been compared to Moses. He led men, marshalled in strong array, to the vantage ground from which he showed them the land of promise, and the way to enter it; while he himself, after all his labors, was not permitted to enjoy it. Such men deserve the highest fame; and thus the most practical philosophers of to-day revere the memory of him who showed them from the mountain-top, albeit in dim vision, the land which they now occupy. II. Again, Bacon is the most notable example among natural philosophers of a man who worked for science and truth alone, with a singleness of purpose and entire unconcern as to immediate and selfish rewards. Bacon the philosopher was in the strongest contrast to Bacon the politician. He left, he said, his labors to posterity; his name and memory to foreign nations, and "to (his) own country, after some time is past over." His own time could neither appreciate nor reward them. Here is an element of greatness worthy of all imitation: he who works for popular applause, may have his reward, but it is fleeting and unsatisfying; he who works for truth alone, has a grand inner consequence while he works, and his name will be honored, if for nothing else, for this loyalty to truth. After what has been said of his servility and dishonesty, it is pleasing to contemplate this unsullied side of his escutcheon, and to give a better significance to the motto on his monument--_Sic sedebat_. HIS ESSAYS.--Bacon's _Essays_, or _Counsels Civil and Moral_, are as intelligible to the common mind as his philosophy is dry and difficult. They are short, pithy, sententious, telling us plain truths in simple language: he had been writing them through several years. He dedicated them, under the title of _Essays_, to Henry, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King James I., a prince of rare gifts, and worthy such a dedication, who unfortunately died in 1612. They show him to be the greatest master of English prose in his day, and to have had a deep insight into human nature. Bacon is said to have been the first person who applied the word _essay_ in English to such writings: it meant, as the French word shows, a little trial-sketch, a suggestion, a few loose thoughts--a brief of something to be filled in by the reader. Now it means something far more--a long
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