TO THE READER. THE plays known as Shakespeares are at the present time universally acknowledged to be the Greatest birth of time, the grandest production of the human mind. Their author also is generally recognised as the greatest genius of all the ages. The more the marvclIous plays are studied, the more wonderful they arc seen to be. Classical scholars are amazed at the prodigious amount of knowledge of classical lore which they display. Lawyers declare ,that their author must take rank among the greatest of lawyers, and must have been learned not only in the theory of lam, but also intimateIy acquainted with its forensic practice. In like manner, travellers feel certain that the author must have visited the foreign cities and countries tvhich he so minutely and graphically describes. It is true that at a dark period for English literature certain critics denied the possibility of Bohemia bcing accurately described as by the sea, and pointed out the manifest absurdity of speaking of the port at Milan but a wider knowledge of the actual facts have vindicated the author at the expense of his dortunate critics. It is the same with respect to othcr matters referred to in the ptays. The expert possessing special knowledge of any subject invariably discovers that the plays sliev that their author was well acquaillted with almost all that was known at the time about that particular subject. And the knowledge is so extensive and so varied that it is not too much to say that there is not a singIe living man capable of perceiving half of the learning involved in the production of the plays. One of the greatest students of law publicly declared, while he was editor of the Law Times, that although he thought that he knew sotncthing of law, yet he was not ashamed to confess that he had not sufficient legal knowledge or mental capacity to enable him to fully comprehend a quarter of the law contained in the plays. Of course, men of single Iearning, who know very little of classics and stilI less of law, do not experience any of these difficulties, because they are not able to perceive how great is the vast store of learning exhibited in the plays. There is also shewn in the plays the most perfect klowledge of Court etiquette, and of the manners and the methods of the greatest in the land, a knowledge nrhicli none but a courtier moving in the highest circles could try any possibility have acquired. In his diary, IJolfe Tone records that the French soldiers who invaded Ireland behaved exactly like the French soldiers are described as conducting themselves at Agincourt in the play of Henry V, and he exclaims, It is marvellous 1Yolfe Tonc also adds that Shakespeare could never have seen a C French soldier, but know that Bacon while in Paris had had considerable experience of them. The mighty author of the immortal plays was gifted with the most brilliant genius ever conferred upon inan. He possessed an intimate and accurate acquaintance, which could not have been artificially acquired, with all the intricacies and mysteries of Court life. He bad by study obtained nearly all the learning that could be gained frotn books. And he had by travel and experience acquired a knowledge of cities and of men that has never been surpassed. LVho was in existence at that period who could by any possibility be supposed to be this universal genius In the days of Queen Elizabeth, for the first time in human history, one such man appeared, the man who is described as the marvel and mystery of the age, and this was the man known to us under the name of Francis Bacon...