To receive the contributions of the past and reduce them to more efficient use in the present and for the future, is the mission of every agent of Providence like Caxton, Roger Bacon, or that gifted son of St. Albans whose dust lies buried near the venerable Abbey, where the second press of old England was set at work within the church, while he thought and wrote without. Francis Bacon was the complement of Aristotle. Both were adapted to their respective ages, and were requisite to each other. Had not the great Greek speculated, the greater Englishman would never have made his demonstrations. The first developed the general form of all reasoning, and the second made a specific application of this to the phenomena of matter. But the deductive mode is only one of the phases of dialectics; and the Baconians of the present day are much in the same position with regard to moral science, that the Aristotelians were in with respect to matter science. A third method was necessitated by the superior worth of the second, and the nations at large await the man to come who shall exhaust the whole doctrine of method, and this will doubtless be consummated in the same direction which scientific excellence has hitherto pursued. CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHY. The era of the subversion of the western empire, A.D. 476, presents a point from which a step forward, and a change for the better in human affairs, was distinctly marked. It was one from which we may most advantageously survey the field of political and moral philosophy. The exterminating swords of barbarian conquerors left scarcely a vestige of former systems behind them. A deluge of new influences prevailed, and the moral aspect of earth was transformed. Men came upon a broader stage, amid more expanding scenes, and were soon acting a new character under impulses and in situations before unknown. Standing on this elevation, we see that old things have passed away, and all things have become new; mental pursuits in general have assumed an augmented interest, and especially is philosophy improved in its influence, accelerated in its progress, and enlarged in its extent. As the gorgeous but unsatisfactory pictures of oriental mysticism gave place to the fervor and fluctuations of more intellectual destinies in Greece--gleams of grandeur and wide tracks of gloom--and as this in turn fell before the gradual rise, broad dominion, and fatal decline of mighty Rome, so the latter sank in darkness, but the night of its tomb was soon seen to rest on a horizon of immortal day, which eventually rose to the zenith with augmented splendor. The Hyrcinian forest teemed with nascent states, and islands which the empress of the seven hills had known only to despise, assumed an imposing attitude to produce a language and dictate laws over realms wider than Rome ever knew.