conditions of our time to give more space than would have been required if they had been content to regard their task as limited by a period of twenty years, and by the degree of reticence with regard to recent events which was formerly thought to be advisable. Of the sixteen thousand articles in the Ninth Edition, a great number needed no revision, but many others—even among the articles dealing with completed achievements, such as the lives of men long since deceased, and the histories of extinct nations—called for modification as a result of recent research. Yet, if the last twenty years alone were to be displayed to the reader, they would be recognized as marked by a progress absolutely unmatched in any equal period of the world's history.
Sir Archibald Geikie, on the occasion of the banquet held at Christ's College. Cambridge, in 1888, to celebrate the issue of the twenty-fourth volume of the Ninth Edition, expressed a wish that it were possible explicitly to contrast the conditions and prospects of the world at that time with what they had been when the eighth edition was completed in 1861, "to sketch the vast realms of knowledge and of thought that had been conquered, and to enumerate even a few of the great treasures, undreamt of in variety and value, which have been added to the sum of human knowledge." Such an apposition, displaying side by side the state of human knowledge in 1880 and its present state, would yield an even more striking lesson. Within these twenty years—and as we have seen, the period covered by the new volumes is in fact much longer—there have been astounding changes in all departments: political, social, economic, religious, scientific, literary, and artistic. Political frontiers have been altered by wars and conventions; the British Empire has vastly increased in' vitality as well as in extent; America, recovered from the shock of her Civil War, has become a world-power as well as an industrial factor of the first importance; Germany, since the Franco-Prussian War, has become another industrial competitor; France has made extraordinary efforts to regain lost ground; and in the Far East. Japan has attained an unforeseen importance. The chief postulates of all branches of inquiry have been revolutionized by the widespread application of the theory of evolution and of new methods of research, while the application of science to the arts has enlarged our vision and led to new inventions in every sphere of life. Preventive medicine and aseptic surgery have come into existence and been matured; literary and artistic production has increased with almost unexampled rapidity, and much of this increase has been wholesome and deserves attention; great men and women have passed away, leaving their lives to the enlightenment of posterity, and new personalities of commanding importance have come to the front.
Containing, as they do, not only an account of this fertile period, but dealing also with many events and developments earlier in the Victorian Era, the new volumes cannot but be of use as a distinct encyclopaedia of modern progress, adapted to the wants of readers who desire to confine their reading to modern topics. In order, on the other hand, to estimate the practical utility of the new volumes, if they be regarded as a supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, attention must be given not only to the inevitable gaps with which the lapse of time has pitted the Ninth Edition, but also to the position which that edition occupies in public esteem. In the United Kingdom alone more than fifty thousand persons possess the Ninth Edition and regard it as the most authoritative work of reference. In the United States more than four hundred thousand copies have been purchased. There are, therefore, in all parts of the English-speaking world, a vast
