pt filling up shelf
after shelf, rich in articles which I often wanted to consult, but what
a labor to find them, until the index of Mr. Gushing, published a few
months since, made the contents of these hundred and twenty volumes as
easily accessible as the words in a dictionary! I had a copy of good Dr.
Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia, a treasure-house to my boyhood which has
not lost its value for me in later years. But where to look for what I
wanted? I wished to know, for instance, what Dr. Burney had to say about
singing. Who would have looked for it under the Italian word cantare? I
was curious to learn something of the etchings of Rembrandt, and
where should I find it but under the head "Low Countries, Engravers
of the,"--an elaborate and most valuable article of a hundred
double-columned close-printed quarto pages, to which no reference, even,
is made under the title Rembrandt.

There was nothing to be done, if I wanted to know where that which I
specially cared for was to be found in my Rees's Cyclopaedia, but to
look over every page of its forty-one quarto volumes and make out
a brief list of matters of interest which I could not find by their
titles, and this I did, at no small expense of time and trouble.

Nothing, therefore, could be more pleasing to me than to see the
attention which has been given of late years to the great work of
indexing. It is a quarter of a century since Mr. Poole published his
"Index to Periodical Literature," which it is much to be hoped is soon
to appear in a new edition, grown as it must be to formidable dimensions
by the additions of so long a period. The "British and Foreign Medical
Review," edited by the late Sir John Forties, contributed to by Huxley,
Carpenter, Laycock, and others of the most distinguished scientific men
of Great Britain, has an index to its twenty-four volumes, and by its
aid I find this valuable series as manageable as a lexicon. The last
edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" had a complete index in a
separate volume, and the publishers of Appletons' "American Cyclopaedia"
have recently issued an index to their useful work, which must greatly
add to its value. I have already referred to the index to the "North
American Review," which to an American, and especially to a New
Englander, is the most interesting and most valuable addition of its
kind to our literary apparatus since the publication of Mr. Allibone's
"Dictionary of Authors." I might almost dare t