philosopher labored in vain; and still more profitless were the disquisitions of the scholastics of the Middle Ages, since they were chiefly used to prop up unintelligible creeds. Theology is not of much account, since it pertains to mysteries we cannot solve. It is not with heaven or hell, or abstract inquiries, or divine certitudes, that we have to do, but the things of earth,-- things that advance our material and outward condition. To be rich and comfortable is the end of life,--not meditations on abstract and eternal truth, such as elevate the soul or prepare it for a future and endless life. The certitudes of faith, of love, of friendship, are of small value when compared with the blessings of outward prosperity. Utilitarianism is the true philosophy, for this confines us to the world where we are born to labor, and enables us to make acquisitions which promote our comfort and ease. The chemist and the manufacturer are our greatest benefactors, for they make for us oils and gases and paints,--things we must have. The philosophy of Bacon is an immense improvement on all previous systems, since it heralds the jubilee of trades, the millennium of merchants, the schools of thrift, the apostles of physical progress, the pioneers of enterprise,--the Franklins and Stephensons and Tyndalls and Morses of our glorious era. Its watchword is progress. All hail, then, to the electric telegraph and telephones and Thames tunnels and Crystal Palaces and Niagara bridges and railways over the Rocky Mountains! The day of our deliverance is come; the nations are saved; the Brunels and the Fieldses are our victors and leaders! Crown them with Olympic leaves, as the heroes of our great games of life. And thou, O England! exalted art thou among the nations,--not for thy Oxfords and Westminsters; not for thy divines and saints and martyrs and poets; not for thy Hookers and Leightons and Cranmers and Miltons and Burkes and Lockes; not for thy Reformation; not for thy struggles for liberty,--but for thy Manchesters and Birminghams, thy Portsmouth shipyards, thy London docks, thy Liverpool warehouses, thy mines of coal and iron, thy countless mechanisms by which thou bringest the wealth of nations into thy banks, and art enabled to buy the toil of foreigners and to raise thy standards on the farthest battlements of India and China. These conquests and acquisitions are real, are practical; machinery over life, the triumph of physical forces, dominion over waves and winds,--these are the great victories which consummate the happiness of man; and these are they which flow from the philosophy which Bacon taught.