Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume I.djvu/9



work originally published under the title of was completed in 1863, since which time the wide circulation which it has attained in all parts of the United States, and the signal developments which have taken place in every branch of science, literature, and art, have induced the editors and publishers to submit it to an exact and thorough revision, and to issue a new edition entitled. Within the last ten years the progress of discovery in every department of knowledge has made a new work of reference an imperative want. The physical sciences have revealed unexpected and important relations in the material world. Chemistry and physiology have been well nigh reconstructed. Light, heat, and force are now subjected to new processes of study, with results truly astonishing. The elements of matter have undergone a fresh analysis, and are arranged in new classifications; the spectroscope has made known the intimate composition of the stars, and opened the secular history of the sun; while the researches of the physiologist and the microscopist have won brilliant victories in the field of animated nature. No less remarkable advances have been made in ethnology, archæology, and history. The records of antiquity have received a new interpretation, and a wonderful light has been thrown upon the annals of our race.

The movement of political affairs has kept pace with the discoveries of science, and their fruitful application to the industrial and useful arts and the convenience and refinement of social life. Great wars and consequent revolutions have occurred, involving national changes of peculiar moment. The civil war of our own country, which was at its height when our last volume appeared, has happily been ended, and a new course of commercial and industrial activity has been commenced. The second French empire has perished, and the third French republic has been proclaimed amid the perturbations of one of the greatest conflicts described in history. A new German empire has been created by the same mighty convulsion; the Spanish monarchy has fallen, and a republic for the first time has been founded on Spanish soil. Austria, defeated by Prussia, has been reconstructed on a new basis. Italy has been united in one kingdom, with Rome for its capital, and the temporal power of the Pope completely overthrown. Japan has experienced one of the most remarkable of revolutions, and significant changes have occurred in China and in other parts of Asia. Large accessions to our geographical knowledge have been made