on;
and of man in society,--of government, of universal justice, of the
fountains of law, of revealed religion.

And if we turn from the new method by which he would advance all
knowledge, and on which his fame as a philosopher chiefly rests,--that
method which has led to discoveries that even Bacon never dreamed of,
not thinking of the fruit he was to bestow, but only the way to secure
it,--even as a great inventor thinks more of his invention than of the
money he himself may reap from it, as a work of creation to benefit the
world rather than his own family, and in the work of which his mind
revels in a sort of intoxicated delight, like a true poet when he
constructs his lines, or a great artist when he paints his picture,--a
pure subjective joy, not an anticipated gain;--if we turn from this
"method" to most of his other writings, what do we find? Simply the
lucubrations of a man of letters, the moral wisdom of the moralist, the
historian, the biographer, the essayist. In these writings we discover
no more worldliness than in Macaulay when he wrote his "Milton," or
Carlyle when he penned his "Burns,"--even less, for Bacon did not write
to gain a living, but to please himself and give vent to his burning
thoughts. In these he had no worldly aim to reach, except perhaps an
imperishable fame. He wrote as Michael Angelo sculptured his Moses; and
he wrote not merely amid the cares and duties of a great public office,
with other labors which might be called Herculean, but even amid the
pains of disease and the infirmities of age,--when rest, to most people,
is the greatest boon and solace of their lives.

Take his Essays,--these are among his best-known works,--so brilliant
and forcible, suggestive and rich, that even Archbishop Whately's
commentaries upon them are scarcely an addition. Surely these are not on
material subjects, and indicate anything but a worldly or sordid nature.
In these famous Essays, so luminous with the gems of genius, we read not
such worldly-wise exhortations as Lord Chesterfield impressed upon his
son, not the gossiping frivolities of Horace Walpole, not the cynical
wit of Montaigne, but those great certitudes which console in
affliction, which kindle hope, which inspire lofty resolutions,--anchors
of the soul, pillars of faith, sources of immeasurable joy, the glorious
ideals of true objects of desire, the eternal unities of truth and love
and beauty; all of which reveal the varied experiences o