THE ENCYCLOPEDIA. AMERICANA.* TnE task of reviewing this volume—and to
review an encyclo- pa3dia may, perhaps, be considered as reducing the function of the critic to an absurdity—is happily made easy by the prefa- tory announcement of the editor's or publisher's, that it is intended not to rival, but to supplement the encyclopaedias which have appeared or are still appearing in Europe, and which com- mand a large circulation in America. It is designed, in fact, to give American readers information, useful or interesting, that is but scantily supplied, or not supplied at all, in works "prepared, primarily, to command the attention of European readers." If it is perfectly understood by the American public that this function of supplementing the stores of knowledge contained in such a work as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and nothing but this, belongs to the volume before us and its • The Encyclopedia Americana, Vol I. " A-C/IN." New York, Philadelphia, and London : J. M. Stodart. 1883. proposed successors, their intention and execution may be almost unreservedly commended. This first instalment of the book (which is, we learn, to be completed in four volumes) gives a variety of information which certainly could not be found collected elsewhere. In the first place, we have in it what may be called an American gazetteer, and one which, as far as we can judge, is very careful and complete. Any one who, to take an instance, will compare the article " Alabama " in this volume with that which is given to the same subject in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, will readily per- ceive that the newer is very much the superior of the two. It has the advantage of giving more recent statistics (and it is to be regretted that the slow, we suppose necessarily slow, progress of the English publication will make some of the earlier infor- mation obsolete before the later volumes can appear), but it is more thorough, and in some respects obviously more correct. There is, for instance, in the English account, a quite remark- able statement, which would make the maximum winter tem- perature of Alabama 86°, and the maximum of summer 104°. The figures now before us, which are obviously intended as a correction, run thus :—" The ordinary range of temperature daring the winter proper is from 30° to 70° Fahr. ; during the summer months, from 73° to 940; in the intermediate seasons, from 42° to 850; the mean annual temperature is about 66°. The exceptional extremes noted during observations continued for more than thirty years have been 14° and 99°." Here, then, we have one feature of the book, and one which makes it valuable to Europeans only in a less degree than to American readers. We may add that under the same word is given a history of the "Alabama Claims."
Another feature is to be found in the copious bio- graphies of living celebrities, and, indeed, of persons who can hardly be called celebrities. These, of course, have been deliberately excluded by the conductors of English works, and we are, at first sight, inclined to think the exclusion right. The Americans' feeling in the matter is wholly different. They like to hear about statesmen, authors, and others whose lives and works interest them, without waiting for their death. There is something to be said for the demand, and if the canons of good- taste are rigorously followed in satisfying it, no great harm is done. These articles certainly make a very interesting addition to this volume, and as certainly they are likely to be useful. Who, whatever his feeling about biographies of the living, does not sometimes turn to Men of the Time, or some such book of reference? Such books are, in fact, the Peerages of literature, politics, and the professions. In these biographical articles, the English reader will find much that is interesting to him under American names, but he must not forget to read one of the not very numerous contributions which have come from this side of the Atlantic, Mr. T. E. Kebbel's account of " Lord Beaconsfield." No one could have been better qualified for the task than Mr. Kebbel. He feels for the great Conservative leader (how strange it seems to call Benjamin Disraeli a Conservative leader !) a more intelligent sympathy than anything of which the ordinary scribes of party are capable. Hence, we have read the fifteen columns which he gives to his subject with much pleasure, though we cannot allow that his conception of the political history of the fifty years through which Lord Beaconsfield's career was extended is either just or complete. Bnt he states his case in a lucid and forcible way, and without bitterness against opponents. The interesting personal details which conclude the article will be read with especial pleasure. It is not a little amusing to find Mr. Kebbel, who is writing for a public of Protectionists, expressing himself with a candour which he is scarcely able to exhibit in his own country. He writes, for instance :—" It was impossible for Disraeli to allow that the corn- tax was a tax on the food of the people, for the benefit of a single class ; on the contrary, it was like other taxes that con- tributed to the support of institutions conducive to the welfare of the public." Did he hold this belief to the day of his death? Does Mr. Kebbel hold it now ?
Literary subjects, such as may be expected to be found in the older cyclopzedias, are, of course, absent. The reader who may expect to find a complete work (he is distinctly warned, by the way, that he will not find it) will be surprised that the only " Athens " described is " the county seat of Athens, co. Ohio." Yet here, also, the new work sometimes hits an undoubted blot in the old. There is an article on the " Emperor Aurelian," for instance, an important person, who is not mentioned in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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