Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/56

 40 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9<-s.iv. JULYS.* A DICTIONARY ADDED TO THE LIBRARY OF REFERENCE ISSUED BY HALF PRICE TO EARLY SUBSCRIBERS. It it unquestionably a habit of the Anglo-Saxons to do more than they seem to be doing, to accomplish the day's work without any superfluous eagerness of gesticulation. The Kmplre extends itself without needless fuss and fanfaronade; mistakes are rectified and mlsdoers punished without unnecessary gnashlngs of the national teeth, one Government succeeds another without aligning the Guards In Parliament Street; and the intricate mechanism of English life revolves with as little creaking and clanging as possible. In the matter of secondary education this silent system of inconspicuous achievement is perhaps carried to an extreme. If we beat the drum a little more, we should be more sure that we are marching with the times. And yet there is reason to believe that, in our unostentatious fashion, we manage to learn something after we leave school. The annual production of books worth reading is quite as large in England as In any other country; the serious reviews are not altogether lost to sight in the flood of cheap magazines, and our newspapers devote more space to contemporary history and less space to tittle-tattle than do the newspapers published in some parts of the world. So constant a supply of valid mental food must inevitably enrich the mind of the general reader, if it is properly digested. And since there is a Steady demand for standard works of reference, it is fair to assume that the British reader takes the trouble to think about what he reads. The unintelligent type of reader is certainly not over fond of encyclopaedias and dictionaries, so that the sale of such works affords a very fair test of the energy or indolence of our assimilation. £350,000. It Is known that over eighteen thousand copies of the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA were sold in the United Kingdom during the year which ended last Lad; Day, a sale representing an Investment by the public of considerably more than 350,0001. in this one work of reference. Within the few weeks which have elapsed since the TIM US announced its issue of the CBNTCHY DICTIONARY more than fifteen hundred copies of that work have been purchased. So keen a demand for works of reference certainly points to the existence of a large class of thoughtful readers, and shows, too, that a good many of us pursue, almost unconsciously, a continued course of secondary education, making headway without any sense of effort. The most cursory examination of such a work as the CENTURY DICTIONARY is sufficient to prove that It must exert a very real influence for good wherever it is habitually used. A WORD-BOOK AND FACT-BOOK. At once a word-book and a fact-book, it serves the double purpose of guiding the reader to the accurate use of words ani the swift apprehension of facts. Unlike the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, It deals with Isolated facts rather than with facto In groups. Of these two methods of presenting information, each possesses its characteristic advantages. When one desires to have all that there Is to learn about any given branch of knowledge, the ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA is found to be the most exhaustive, the most readable, and the most authoritative collection of treatises which has ever been formed. When, on the other hand, It is expedient to find one's way as quickly as possible to any single Item of Information, disregarding the temptation to pause for the consideration of allied subjects, the brief and Individualized expositions offered by the CENTURY DICTIONARY enable the reader to learn what he wants to learn without encountering extraneous facts. The two works of reference are admirable complements one to the other from this point of view. A* a word-book the CENTURY DICTIONARY Is Incomparably the best In the world. Its vast vocabulary comprises the English of the past and of the present, the whole body of the language, literary, technical, and colloquial, provincial, colonial, and American, all possible usages, and all possible forms of spelling. Its tables of synonyms, its collection of quotations, and the copious illustrations, which add not less to the utility than to the beauty of Its pages, are all planned and executed with surpassing skill. Its eight volumes—seven thousand pages In all—contain 500,000 definitions, 300,000 quotations, and 7,500 Illustrations—a wealth of detail which no other dictionary has as yet approached. . A BARGAIN FOR PROMPT APPLICANTS. The price at which t his marvellous work is offered by the TIMES Is, to bookbuyers whose means are not unlimited, a consideration of no little importance. In pursuance of the policy adopted by the TIMES in its Issue of the ENCYCLO-