of the field.  These authorities were to be found, not in a single language, but in several; and even after they were found, and the various results of their investigations put at their just estimate, the important work of selection had then only just commenced.  Here were the master-critics and antiquaries,—­the Muellers, Champollions, and all.  Some use must be made of each; but the compass, no less than the design, of the work demanded the exclusion of all secondary and unimportant matter, yet in such a manner that the ideal unity should not be at all disturbed.  Here was required, not merely tact and discrimination, but a high degree of philosophical analysis; and since this was valueless except as it was followed by comprehensive synthesis, the power of artistic combination was no less requisite to the complete result.

From the foregoing remarks it must not be supposed that there has been throughout a remodelling of all the material used.  On the contrary, it is one of the most important of the features which give value and interest to the work, that in frequent instances the material has been presented precisely as it came to hand; a felicitous or humorous turn of a sentence, a pointed antithesis, a happy grouping of historic incidents, or a vigorous clinching of manifold thoughts in a single expression, has been happily preserved where by others it might have been ejected, or marred in the changing, for the sake of giving to the work a factitious claim to an originality which, in such a field, is plainly the least desirable characteristic.  Our most hearty thanks are due to Mrs. Botta that she has been willing to sacrifice what at the best would have been a spurious claim to the purely legitimate one, of having conquered almost insuperable difficulties, and, by the most conscientious fidelity, elaborated a really valuable treatise, where before there existed none at all.

So great as has been the need of this work, so great will be the appreciation of it at the hands of the reading public.  A whole has been given where hitherto only parts had existed, and those for the most part inaccessible to the general reader.

We have no space to enlarge upon the many particular excellences of the book.  It is vivacious in style, having none of the tedium belonging to most works of this description.  There is very much concerning ancient religion, and concerning the classification of languages, as well as respecting the peculiarities of each, that has never before been presented in a popular form.  We have rarely, indeed, seen so much that was valuable, and so well digested, compressed within such limited bounds.

The New American Cyclopaedia; a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge.  Edited by GEORGE RIPLEY and CHARLES A. DANA. 16 vols. royal 8vo.  New York:  D. Appleton & Co.