University of Virginia Library

“Witnesses from every part of the country concurred in declaring that the
Encyclopædia Americana was in a fair way to degrade the dignity of learning,
and especially the learning of Encyclopædias, by making it too cheap—that the
multitudes of all classes were infatuated with it in saying in so many words
from the highest to the lowest, `the more we see of the work the better we like
it.”'

“The articles in the present volume appear to us to evince the same ability
and research which gained so favorable a reception for the work at its commencement.
The Appendix to the volume now before us, containing an account
of the Indian Languages of America, must prove highly interesting to the reader
in this country; and it is at once remarkable as a specimen of history and philology.
The work altogether, we may again be permitted to observe, reflects
distinguished credit upon the literary and scientific character, as well as the
scholarship of our country.”

“The copious information which this work affords on American subjects,
fully justifies its title of an American Dictionary; while at the same time the
extent, variety, and felicitous disposition of its topics, make it the most convenient
and satisfactory Encyclopædia that we have ever seen.”

“If the succeeding volumes shall equal in merit the one before us, we may
confidently anticipate for the work a reputation and usefulness which ought to
secure for it the most flattering encouragement and patronage.”

“The variety of topics is of course vast, and they are treated in a manner
which is at once so full of information and so interesting, that the work, instead
of being merely referred to, might be regularly perused with as much pleasure as
profit.”

“We view it as a publication worthy of the age and of the country, and can
not but believe the discrimination of our countrymen will sustain the publishers,
and well reward them for this contribution to American Literature.”

“It reflects the greatest credit on those who have been concerned in its production,
and promises, in a variety of respects, to be the best as well as the most
compendious dictionary of the arts, sciences, history, polities, biography, &c.
which has yet been compiled. The style of the portion we have read is terse
and perspicuous; and it is really curions how so much scientific and other information
could have been so satisfactorily communicated in such brief limits.”

“A compendious library, and invaluable book of reference.”

“Those who can, by any honest modes of economy, reserve the sum of two
dollars and fifty cents quarterly, from their family expenses, may pay for this
work as fast as it is published; and we confidently believe that they will find at
the end that they never purchased so much general, practical, useful information
at so cheap a rate.”

“If the encouragement to the publishers should correspond with the testimony
in favor of their enterprise, and the heautiful and faithful style of its execution
the hazard of the undertaking, bold as it was, will be well compensated; and
our libraries will be enriched by the most generally useful encyclopedic dictionary
that has been offered to the readers of the English language. Full enough
for the general scholar, and plain enough for every capacity, it is far more convenient,
in every view and form, than its more expensive and ponderous predecessors.”

“The high repatation of the contributers to this work, will not fail to insure
it a favorable reception, and its own merits will do the rest.”

“The work will be a valuable possession to every family or individual that
can afford to parchase it; and we take pleasure, therefore, in extending the
knowledge of its merits.”

“The Encylopædia Americana is a prodigious improvement upon all that has
gone before it; a thing for our country, as well as the country that have it birth,
to be prond of; an inexhaustible treasury of useful, pleasant, and familiar learning
on every possible subject, so arranged as to be speedily and safety referred to
on emergency, as well as on detiberate inquiry; and better still, adapted to the
understanding, and put within the reach of the multitude. * * * The Encyclopædia
Americana is a work without which no library worthy of the name
can hereafter be made up.”