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