We regret to have to record the death of Mr.
James Spading, he most enthusiastic and learned of all the editors of Bacon, who was run over by a hansom cab,—the approach of which, owing to his deafness, he did not hear,—near Curzon Street, on Saturday, and died in St. George's Hospital of erysipelas, resulting from the injury, on Wedaesclay last, in the seventy- first year of his age. He was one of those accomplished men who really devote their lives to the study of a great author, and so provide the materials for judging him as he had never been judged before. Whether Mr. Spedding's "Life and Letters of Bacon" has really redeemed Bacon in any essential -degree from the stain with which Macanlay's famous essay branded him; we are quite unable to judge. But it is certain that very few men taking so favourable a view of Bacon as Mr. Speclding did, would have put together all the facts of his life with so impartial and painstaking a desire to get at the xact truth, whether supporting his own view or otherwise. It was in the genuine spirit of the Baconian induction that Mr. Spading arrayed the facts upon which Bacon himself must be judged.
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