Much has been said in praise of the monks of old for preserving works of solid wisdom; but why can not a good word be said for those publishers of the present day who confer a service by not merely embalming, but by reviving and sending forth by thousands into real life the best books of the past? There are many authors who are quoted by everybody, and read by very few, simply because good modern editions of their works, at a moderate price, are rare. BACON is preeminently one of these; so much, indeed, is he a case in point, that BULWER in speaking of the celebrated axiom, Knowledge is Power, employs him as an example to warn a young scholar from quoting at second-hand an author whom he has never read. The present edition includes all the works extant of Lord BACON, embracing, as we learn from SPEDDING'S preface (which has the rare defect of being much too brief), a biography, which in minute detail and careful finish, and facts hitherto unpublished, will far surpass any before written. Yet, to stay the appetite of the reader, anxious to revive the main points of BACON'S life, he gives in this first volume the short biography by Dr. WILLIAM RAWLEY. In addition to these introductions, we are gratified by a general preface to BACON'S Philosophical Works, by ROBERT LESLIE HARRIS, one to the _Parasceve_ by JAMES SPEDDING, and a third to the _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, in which BACON'S claims to be the creator of what is popularly and generally understood as the Inductive Philosophy are most fairly examined; not in the spirit of the common biographer who always canonizes his subject through thick and thin, but in that of an impartial seeker for truth, resolved to naught extenuate and set down naught in malice. It is believed by many that BACON was simply so fortunate as to have his picture stand as the frontispiece of the new Philosophy, when in truth other contemporaries, who made great discoveries by following precisely his method, as, for instance, GALILEO, were quite as much entitled to the glory. But examination of BACON'S works proves that though the great work of proof never was completed by him, that which he embraced, foresaw, and projected, was of that vast comprehensiveness which fully entitles him to be regarded, not merely as the most proper of _names_ whereby to indicate the author of Induction (since the world must always have a name), but in reality the one of all others who best understood what form the development of science must assume to become perfect. The treatment of this question by the editors is truly interesting, and worthy their great undertaking.