were the nobler? Suppose both visionary, which vision is the grander of the two? Our common astronomy may be compared to a measurement of the dimensions of the human brain; Bacon's to a knowledge of its relations to the body and the nervous system; and Plato's to the study of the mind, of which the brain is but the organ. The stars may be called the developments of "God's Own Head:" our common astronomers number them, and take their weights and sizes; Bacon wishes to know how they are connected with our every-day life and fortunes; Plato, to read the divine idea-the large thought and purpose of God-inscribed on them in legible fire.

It seems to us that in this science we are fast approaching a point where we need the guidance rather of a new Plato than of a new Bacon or Newton. The telescope of Lord Rosse has sounded our present astronomy to its real depths. Few more great prizes are reserved, we suspect, in that starry sea. We have attained the knowledge that the stars are old, that they are of one stuff, and that there is no visible end to their numbers. What more of any moment, in this direction, by our present methods, is ever likely to be reached by us? It is like walking through a pine forest of vast extent and uniform aspect; a few miles tire and satisfy us. So now, the news of "stars, stars, stars," pouring on us in everlasting succession--all like each other, all distant, all inscrutable, and ever silent, the moral history of all unknown-produces very little effect, and the midnight heavens of modern astronomy become again, as to the eye of childhood, a mighty and terrible pageant or procession, the meaning and the purpose, the whither and the whence, of which we do not understand. And we are tempted to say to astronomers, as they prate of their new firmaments, and planets, and comets, "We know something like this long ago; can ye not give us some light on the meaning of these distant orbs, or read us off some worthy lessons of moral interest from that ever-widening but neverclearing page?" And to cry out to the stars, "Speak as well as shine, ye glorious mutes in the halls of heaven! Shed down on some selected and favored ear the true meaning of your mystic harmonies! Hieroglyphics, traced by the finger of God on the walls of night, when shall the Daniel arrive to interpret you, and to tell us whether ye contain tidings of hope

or of despair? Star-gazers have looked at you long enough, and mathematicians weighed and measured you; when shall the eye-the Rossian eye of a true seer--lift itself up to your contemplation, and extract the heart of your mystery? If not, men may soon turn away from you in disappointment, and look with as much hope on the bright foam-bells of an autumn ocean as on you, the froth of immensity."

Plato's opinions on medicine are next brought forward against him; and yet in nothing do we perceive greater proof of his profound sagacity. True, he pushes his views to excess; but under the veil of his extravagant statements we see an idea which is gaining ground, and shall yet become universal-that medicine, as it began in, shall return to, surgery; that, as a barber was the first, he shall be the last physician; that in a body, as well as in a mind diseased, the patient best ministers to himself; that the words, "Physician, heal thyself," may be freely rendered, "Cure thee of quackery by ceasing to be a physician at all;" and that nature, strong in her own resources, coincides with Plato in crying out, "Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it." This belief, having sent on before it its imperfect forerunners, of Homoeopathy and Hydropathy, is following them in full force, and in a higher form, and threatens soon to turn out of doors the "Royal Academy of Physicians," to celebrate a universal jubilee-illumination at the death of quackery-and to burn drugs, like demons, in a blaze of consuming fire. Honor to old Plato for having, by one glance of his eye, seen the quackery of ages through and down to its doing day.

Grasping always at the ideals of things, Plato saw that all true legislation must propound to itself a lofty end, and he proclaims that end to be the "virtue of the subject.' This was the thought of Moses too, and the theocracy of Israel was its accomplishment. It were easy to prove that it was also the idea of Christ, although its realisation was deferred, and he did not at that time restore the kingdom to Israel. It is certainly the idea of Millennial Christianity; but Mr. Macaulay scouts it as utopian, and prefers the line of legislation recommended by Bacon, and, alas! acted on by the majority of human governors, which has for its watchword the low word "well-being;" which acknowledges no virtues but indus

try and submission, and no God but Mammon; which is careful to regulate and derive revenue from stews, but never intermeddles with the education of souls; which tolerates every species of corruption so long as it is profitable, and the money derived from it does not smell; which washes the outside of the platter, whitens the sepulchre, and decks the corpse, but neglects the weightier matters of the law-judgment, mercy, and faith; and seeks (not in vain) to divorce human legisla tion from Eternal Justice. Let the praises of Baconian legislation be sung by mightier voices than ours-by the whirlwinds of anarchy, the blood-red trumpets of revolution, the cries of tormented and fugitive slaves, and by that crash of all-existing governments, which may form the first thunderstep of Him who is to come, and who, in pronouncing doom against them may make this the conclusive charge: "Ye did not make it the principal end of your legislation to make men virtuous; ye turned my father's house into a house of merchandise, nay, a den of thieves; and ye must be scourged -hence!"

An antithetical comparison is introduced between the philosophy of Plato and that of Bacon, which, as it is short, we may quote:-" The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a God; the aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants; the aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable. Plato drew a good bow; but, like Acestes in Virgil,' he aimed at the stars, and, therefore, though there was no want of strength or skill, the shot was thrown away. His arrow was indeed followed by a track of dazzling radiance, but it struck nothing. Bacon fixed his eye on a mark which was placed on the earth, and within bow-shot, and he hit it in the white. The philosophy of Plato began in words, and ended in words; the philosophy of Bacon began in observations, and ended in arts."

Let us try a parallel on the other side of the question, which, if not so pointed, is much more true. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to make the dungeon of man's irrecoverable captivity as comfortable as possible, to ventilate it

well, to loose everything except the chains, to cleanse the floors, clear the windows of cobwebs, and to whisper the while to the bondage, Esto perpetua; that of the Platonic was to set the lawful but hopeful prisoner free. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to cherish, expand, and cultivate the animal and intellectual nature of man; that of the Platonic was to strengthen and purify the spiritual, which is the germ of the Godhead in humanity. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to "supply man's vulgar wants," and leave him content as a sated sloth with the supply; that of Plato was to suggest the thrilling thought, that there are instincts and wants in man which earth and time cannot satisfy, and which, with their silent uplifted fingers, point to immortality.

The aim of the Baconian philosophy was, even if attainable, not very noble-but attainable it was not, since the sensuous, as well as the spiritual, nature of man continually cries, "Give, give." Bacon's system, although it had a "New Atlantis,' had no "Mahometan Paradise" annexed to it; the aim of Plato, partaking of the eternal, demands the field of the future for its development, and disdains the petty geographical gauges by which it has been hitherto tried. Plato "aimed at the sun," like Hercules of old; but Macaulay has not, with all his "thunder," broken the "shaft," which is still traveling upwards with unabated speed in the heaven-sent breeze of Christianity, and shall hit that far "White" in due time. Bacon's arrow has not pierced entirely through even his broad targe-this world. The "philosophy of Bacon began in observations and ended in arts;" Plato's began in instincts, and shall end in a Daedalean crop of men.

Macaulay comes, in fine, to the question on which he lays most stress-that of the results of the two philosophies. On this point we have touched already, but must be permitted another word. Now, that many and wonderful results have sprung from the pursuit of the Baconian plan of philosophising, is conceded at once. But are they, after all, equal to the panegyrics bestowed on them? Are they not principally mechanical? Have they made man, as a whole, much happier, wiser, or better? What is "morality," or "moral obligation," without "grounds"--and Bacon has, according to Macaulay, laid down no such grounds. He says, "he loved

to dwell on the power of the Christian religion, to effect much that the ancient philosophers only promised." This might have been only a compliment; and how easy it were to turn round and to say, "the objections to the ancient philosophy you urge, may be urged, with equal force, against the Christian faith-where do we find the moral perfection at which it aimed?-where the faultless men it sought to produce?—has it not been a sublime failure?" And so we grant it has; unless you admit the facts of a great future, to which it points, and of a supernatural intervention, which it promises. And what we demand for Christianity, we demand also for the Platonic philosophy. Like it, it has done much, but not hitherto in proportion to the infinite scale it has itself fixed. Yet we are willing to weigh even its present products against Macaulay's elaborate list of the results of the Baconian method. "That has lengthened life" (Macaulay hopes, we suppose, to live longer than Methuselah !), " mitigated pain" (Christianity has no solace in it equal to chloroform !), CXtinguished diseases" (by creating new ones), "increased the fertility of the soil" (to the benefit of the serf, eh ?), “given new securities to the mariner" (the polar star shone and the needle trembled before Bacon was born), "furnished new arms to the warrior" (is this a service to the human race? must the name of Bacon be written in blood ?), spanned great rivers and estuaries with bridges of form unknown to our fathers" (what an achievement! the rainbow is nothing to it!),"guided the thunderbolt innocuously from heaven to earth" (shall we never hear the last of that poor, tattered, tell-little kite of Franklin's, the Elijah's mantle of modern philosophers ?), "lighted up the night with the splendor of the day" (was it not so also in the halls of Persepolis and the palaces of Babylon, or is all the glory of night included in gas?), "extended the range of the human vision, accelerated motion, annihilated distance, facilitated intercourse, enabled man to descend into the sea, soar into the air, penetrate into the noxious recesses of the earth, traverse the land in cars without horses;" and so on he goes, like the hack orator at a Watt or Mechanics' Institute, through the wearisome round of railways, diving-bells, baloons, safety lamps, &c. Splendid toys, truly! Childish things, fitting our present state of ad