carried out with the vigor and skill which mark its commencement, it will, when completed, be the best and most condensed Cyclopaedia for popular use in any language.  The guaranty for its successful completion is to be found in the character and abilities of the editors, and the resources at their command.  Mr. Ripley is an accomplished man of letters, familiar with the whole field of literature and philosophy, gifted with a mental aptitude equally for facts and ideas, a fanatic for no particular branch of knowledge, but with a genial appreciation of each, and endowed with a largeness and catholicity of mind which eminently fit him to mould the multitudinous materials of a work like the present into the form of a prescribed plan.  Mr. Dana is well known as one of the chief editors of the most influential journal in the country, as combining vigorous intellect with indefatigable industry, and as capable, both in the domain of facts and in the domain of principles, of “toiling terribly.”  The resources of the editors are, literally, almost too numerous to mention.  They include the different Encyclopaedias and popular Conversations-Lexicons in various languages,—­recent biographies, histories, books of travel, and scientific treatises,—­the opportunities of research afforded by the best private and public libraries,—­and a body of contributors, scattered over different portions of the United States and Europe, of whom nearly a hundred have written for the present volume, and, in some cases, have contributed the results of personal observation, research, and discovery.  These contributors are selected with a view to their proficiency and celebrity in their several departments.  The scientific articles are written by scientific men; those on technology and machinery, by practical machinists and engineers; those on military and naval affairs, by officers of the army and navy; and those which relate to the history and doctrines of the various Christian churches and denominations, by men who have both the knowledge of their subjects which comes from study and the knowledge which comes from sympathy.

The plan of the editors implies a perfect neutrality in regard to all controverted points in politics, science, philosophy, and religion; and though they cannot avoid controversy as a fact in the history of opinion, it is their purpose to have the Cyclopaedia give an impartial statement of various opinions without an intrusion of their own or those of their contributors.  In considering how far, in the first volume, they have succeeded in their general design, it must be remembered that a Cyclopaedia which shall be satisfactory to all readers alike is an ideal which the human imagination may contemplate, but which seems to be beyond the reach of human wit practically to attain.  Besides, each reader is apt to have a pet interest in certain persons, events, topics, beliefs, which stand in his own mind for universal knowledge, and he is naturally vexed to find how their importance dwindles when they