statements will be corrected, even if the whole question of the discovery is not more thoroughly argued.  It seems curious that a discovery which destroys pain should be a constant cause of pain to every person in any way connected with it.  It may not be within the province of a Cyclopaedia to undertake the decision of a question still so vehemently controverted; but we think it might be so stated as to include all the facts, harmonize portions at least of the conflicting evidence, and put some people “out of pain.”  We must attribute it to a careless reading of the proof-sheets that the editors have allowed the concluding paragraph in the article “Adams” to intrude village gossip into a work which should be an example to American scholarship, and not a receptacle of newspaper scandal.

In conclusion, we think that the impression which an examination of the present volume, considered as a whole, leaves on the mind is, that the editors have generally succeeded in making it both comprehensive and compact,—­comprehensive without being superficial, and compact without being dry and dull.  As a book for the desultory reader, it will be found full of interest and attractiveness, while it is abundantly capable of bearing severer tests than any to which the desultory reader will be likely to subject it.  Minor faults can easily be detected, but we think its great merits are much more obvious than its little defects.  The probability is, that, when completed, it will be found to contain articles by almost every person of literary and scientific note in the United States; for the wide and friendly relations which the editors hold with American authors and savans, of all sects, parties, and sections, will enable them to obtain valuable contributions, even if the general interest in the success of an American Cyclopaedia were not sufficient of itself to draw the intellect of the country to its pages.  As a work which promises to be so honorable to the literature of the country, we trust that it will meet with a public patronage commensurate with its deserts.