Some faint idea of the bulk of our English records may be obtained, by adverting to the fact, that a single statute, the Land Tax Commissioners’ Act, passed in the first year of the reign of his present majesty, measures, when unrolled, upwards of nine hundred feet, or nearly twice the length of St. Paul’s Cathedral within the walls; and if it ever should become necessary to consult the fearful volume, an able-bodied man must be employed during three hours in coiling and uncoiling its monstrous folds.  Should our law manufactory go on at this rate, and we do not anticipate any interruption in its progress, we may soon be able to belt the round globe with parchment.  When, to the solemn acts of legislature, we add the showers of petitions, which lie (and in more senses than one) upon the table, every night of the session; the bills, which, at the end of every term, are piled in stacks, under the parental custody of our good friends, the Six Clerks in Chancery; and the innumerable membranes, which, at every hour of the day, are transmitted to the gloomy dens and recesses of the different courts of common-law and of criminal jurisdiction throughout the kingdom, we are afraid that there are many who may think that the time is fast approaching for performing the operation which Hugh Peters recommended as “A good work for a good Magistrate.”  This learned person, it will be recollected, exhorted the commonwealth men to destroy all the muniments in the Tower—­a proposal which Prynne considers as an act inferior only in atrocity to his participation in the murder of Charles I., and we should not be surprised if some zealous reformer were to maintain, that a general conflagration of these documents would be the most essential benefit that could be conferred upon the realm.—­Quarterly Rev.

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ENCYCLOPAEDIAS.

In the German universities an extensive branch of lectures is formed by the Encyclopaedias of the various sciences.  Encyclopaedia originally implied the complete course or circle of a liberal education in science and art, as pursued by the young men of Greece; namely, gymnastics, a cultivated taste for their own classics, music, arithmetic, and geometry.  European writers give the name of encyclopaedia, in the widest scientific sense, to the whole round or empire of human knowledge, arranged in systematic or alphabetic order; whereas the Greek imports but practical school knowledge.  The literature of the former is voluminous beyond description, it having been cultivated from the beginning of the middle ages to the present day.  Different from either of them is the encyclopaedia of the German universities; this is an introduction into the several arts and sciences, showing the nature of each, its extent, utility, relation to other studies and to practical life, the best method of pursuing it, and the sources