After Dr. Black’s death his manuscript lectures were revised and published by Professor Robison, in two quarto volumes, in 1803. The first and most important portion of the work is devoted to the subject of heat; and contains the development of the author’s original researches to which we have referred. The simplicity of style, the admirable taste and propriety of language, and the perspicuous and luminous method of illustration, cannot be too highly praised. With respect to the other portion, embracing the details of chemistry properly so called, though the same commendation as to the manner must be bestowed, the matter, which was not less excellent for the time at which the lectures were delivered, was yet, at the period of the publication, necessarily much behind the advance of discovery. [Illustration: _Engraved by J. Posselwhite._ LORD BACON. _From a Print by J. Houbraken 1738._ Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. _London, Published by Charles Knight & C^o. Ludgate Street._ ] [Illustration] LORD BACON. Among the many great names which England boasts of, few have such claims to her gratitude as that of FRANCIS BACON. For besides the unparalleled services which science received from him, to his _original_ genius we may indirectly ascribe many, if not most, of those large improvements in the arts of life which have raised this nation to the highest place among the countries of the world. Francis Bacon was the second son, by a second marriage, of Sir Nicholas Bacon, twenty years Keeper of the Great Seal in the reign of Elizabeth, and Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, the preceptor of Edward the Sixth. He was born at York House or Place, in the Strand, January 22, 1561. In 1573 he was entered of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here he speedily acquired more than the ordinary learning of the age, becoming deeply versed in classical literature. Although taught to look up to Aristotle as to a writer whom it was almost heresy to question, yet at that early age he began to perceive where his philosophy failed, and to conceive the reorganization of a purer and better system. “His exceptions against that great philosopher not being founded on the worthlessness of the author, to whom he would ascribe all high attributes, but for the unfruitfulness of the way; being a philosophy only for disputations and contentions, but barren in the production of works for the benefit of the life of man, in which mind he continued to his dying day.”—(Dr. Rawley’s Life of Bacon.) His intellectual efforts were ever after bent on working out and declaring these novel views, of which, through many modifying and expanding minds, we now reap the fruits.