The New American Cyclopædia
a Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. Edited by and . 16 vols. royal 8vo. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
THE sixteenth and concluding volume of the “New American Cyclopædia” brings Messrs. Ripley and Dana to the end of one of the most laborious and important literary works ever undertaken in this country; and the voice of the public, we are sure, will be all but unanimous in congratulating them upon the generally satisfactory manner in which they have performed their task. The cost of the work, according to a New-York journal, has been over four hundred thousand dollars. Six years have been spent in its execution, and nearly five hundred writers have been employed to contribute to it. Naturally, the articles are of Very unequal merit; but it is fair to remark that a high standard of scholarship and literary polish has evidently been aimed at from the first volume to the last, and there is scarcely any point upon which the “ New American Cyclopædia “ may not safely challenge comparison with any work of similar pretensions in the English language.
Practically, none of the cyclopædias previously accessible in our language has now much value. Such works as “ Rees’s,” the “ Edinburgh,” the “ London,” and the “ Penny ” Cyclopædias, the “ Encyclopædia Metropolitana,” and the excellent, though rather brief, “ Encyclopædia Americana ” of Dr. Francis Lieber, the only one, except the “New American,” ever written in this country, however good in their day, have long been entirely out of date. The “English Cyclopædia ” of Charles Knight, and the eighth edition of the famous “ Encyclopædia Britannica,” were completed while the work of Messrs. Ripley and Dana was yet in progress ; but they are so different from the latter in their scope and execution, and so much more costly, that they can hardly be said to rival it. The first-named is a revised issue of the old “Penny Cyclopædia” of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and retains some of the best features of that excellent work. Its arrangement seems to us peculiarly inconvenient; but its most glaring defect is the lack of American subjects, and the slipshod, unsatisfactory, and inaccurate manner in which the few that are found in it have been treated. The “ Encyclopædia Britannica ” is open to the same objection. The first edition of this great work appeared over ninety years ago. It contained neither historical, biographical, nor geographical articles, and was rather a collection of treatises on the principal arts and sciences than a cyclopædia in the common acceptation of the term. It has since been five times almost remodelled, arranged alphabetically, and greatly enlarged ; but it still preserves its old distinguishing feature of treating great scientific and historical subjects exhaustively under a single head : for instance, there are two elaborate historical articles on “Britain” and “England,” but none on Charles I. or Charles II.; long articles on “Animal Kingdom” and “Mammalia,” — so long, in fact, that it is almost impossible to find anything in them without an index,— but none on the separate animals. For the scholar, this plan, perhaps, has its advantages; but, for the unlearned reader, who turns to his cyclopædia to find an intelligible account of the habits of some particular creature, without caring greatly what its precise place may be in the zoological kingdom, or looks for a name without knowing whether it belongs to a fish or a river, no book that professes to be a manual of reference could well be arranged on a more inconvenient principle. One of the chief duties of a cyclopædia is to save trouble, — to put one on the high-road to knowledge, without unnecessary delay in finding the guide-boards. But send a half-educated man to look for a scrap of learning in an article of a hundred pages, and one might as well at once turn him loose into a library. And what is worse, the unwieldy dimensions of these great articles are out of all proportion to the information they contain. We venture to assert that the ponderous “ Encyclopædia Britannica,” with its twenty-two quarto volumes, will tell less, for instance, about the Horse, or about Louis XIV., than the much smaller work of Messrs. Ripley and Dana. In the “New American Cyclopædia ” there are few articles over twenty pages long. The leading subjects in the sciences, such as “Anatomy,” “ Botany,” “ Physiology,” etc., have from three to ten pages each, — enough to give an outline of the principles and history of the science. The great geographical and political divisions of the globe are treated at somewhat greater length. Every important plant, beast, bird, and fish, every large town, river, lake, province, and mountain, every notable monarch, and every great battle, (not forgetting “ Bull Run ” and the “ Chickahominy Campaign,”) is the subject of a separate article.
Next to this very convenient subdivision of topics, the most striking merit of the new cyclopædia is, perhaps, comprehensiveness. Among its faults, very few faults of omission can fairly be charged; and, indeed, it seems to us rather to err in giving too many articles, especially on American second-rate preachers, politicians, and literary men, all of whom are no doubt ticketed for immortality by a select circle of friends and admirers, but in whom the public at large take the faintest possible interest. On the other hand, the space given to such heroes is small; and so long as they do not exclude more valuable matter, but only add a little to the bulk of the volumes, they do no great harm, and may chance to be useful. In the department of natural history this work is much fuller than any other general dictionary. It is also especially complete in technology and law, (the latter department having been under the care of Professor Theophilus Parsons,) and sufficiently so in medicine, theology, and other branches of science.
Among the articles upon which its success and reputation will chiefly rest are those relating to technology. With scarcely an exception, they are plain, practical, and full of common sense. Those on “ Cotton ” and “ Wool ” and their manufactures, the various metals and the ways of working them, (the article on “ Zinc ” is the best we have ever seen on that subject,) “ Gas,” “ Ship,” “ Railroad,” “Telegraph,” “Sewing-Machine,” “Steam,” and “Sugar,” are compact summaries of valuable knowledge, and will go far to commend the work to a class of persons who, except in our own country, are not much given to reading or book-buying. They vindicate the claims of the Cyclopædia to be a popular dictionary, not intended solely for the scholar’s library, but directed to the wants of the artisan and man of business. It is not too much to say of many of them,—of “Ship,” for instance, and “ Telegraph,”—that, apart from their value as records of industrial progress and invention, they are interesting enough to furnish a very pleasant hour’s occupation to the desultory reader.
The other scientific articles are mostly written in a clear, unpretending style, with a sparing use of technical expressions; and so far as we have discovered, they do ample justice to all recent discoveries. The articles by Professor Bache on the “ Tides,” Professor Dalton on “Embryology,” Professor J. D. Dana on “Crystallography,” Dr. W. H. Draper on the “ Nervous System,” Professor James Hall on “ Palæontology,” Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, on “Magnetism ” and “ Meteorology,” James T. Hodge on “ Earth ” and “ Electricity,” Erauk H. Storer on “ Chemistry ” and kindred subjects, Dr. Reuben on “ Heat,” “Light,” “Vision,” “Winds,” etc., and the philological contributions of Dr. Kraitsir and Professor Whitney, do the highest credit to the work in which they appear. The forbidding appearance of Dr. Kraitsir’s articles will get more notice than their deep learning. We cannot but regret that such valuable papers as those on “Hieroglyphics,” “Cuneiform Inscriptions,” “ Indian Languages,” and we may add, though belonging to another class of subjects, “Brahma” and “Buddha,” by the same author, should not have been dressed with a little more taste, and the naked deformity of barbarous paradigms covered with some of the ornaments of a readable style. It is the more a pity, because the articles are well worth any care that could be spent upon them.
The biographical articles are sufficiently numerous, and, though rigidly condensed, are full enough for all ordinary purposes. There are few such elaborate biographies as those contributed by Macaulay, De Quincey, and others, to the “ Encyclopædia Britannica ” ; but Mr. Bancroft’s “ Jonathan Edwards,” Mr. Everett’s “ Hallam,” “ Washington,” and “ Daniel Webster,” President Felton’s “ Agassiz,” Professor Lowell’s “ Dante,” Professor Schaff’a “ Luther ” and “ Melancthon,” Mr. Seward’s “ DeWitt Clinton,” A. W. Thayer’s “Beethoven,” “Handel,” “Haydn,” and “Mozart,” Richard Grant White’s “Shakespeare,” and the articles on “Patrick Henry,” “ Washington Irving,” “ Milton,” “ Southey,” “ Schiller,” “ Swift,” and many others we might name, are admirable specimens of literary composition. Among miscellaneous articles that deserve particular praise are a well-written and elaborate history of the Jewish people and literature under the title “ Hebrews ” ; a picturesque account of “London”; a summary of all that is known about “ Japan ” ; excellent histories of “ Newspapers ” and “Periodical Literature”; a brilliant article on “Athens” by the late President Felton ; a review of “ Arctic Discovery ” ; valuable and exceedingly interesting papers on “Army,” “Artillery,” “Infantry,” and “ Cavalry,” with one on “ Gunnery” by Commodore Charles Henry Davis ; “ Painting” ; “ Sculpture ” ; “ Serfs ” ; “Slavery”; “Hungary”; and the best published account of the “Mormons.” The article on the “ United States,” fills one hundred and twenty pages, including thirty-three pages of fresh statistical tables, and gives an admirable summary of our history down to last September; it closes with a comprehensive survey of American literature. The Supplement gives a biography of nearly every general in the Union and Rebel armies.
The promises of the editors on the score of impartiality have been well kept. It would be too much to expect them to satisfy everybody, or never to be caught tripping; but in the great questions of religion and politics, they seem to have preserved a happy mean between the outspoken freedom of the partisan and the halting timidity of the man who never commits himself because he never has an opinion. Their contributors represent nearly every Christian creed, every shade of politics, and every part of the Englishspeaking world, from Salt Lake City to London, and from Mobile to Montreal.
We have only to add that the Cyclopædia does fuller justice to our own country than she has ever received from such a book before ; that the historical and statistical articles present the latest accessible information; and that, so far as our opportunities of examination permit us to judge, the book, though of course not free from errors, is accurate to a more than ordinary degree. The labor of the editors has been careful and conscientious; and they have produced a work which must long endure as a valuable contribution to American literature and a credit to American scholarship.