l of the work that would read,--some of it oftener
than once. The character of the whole reminded us somewhat of that
style of building common in some of the older ruins of the north
country, in which we find layers of huge stones surrounded by strips
and patches of a minute pinned work composed of splinters and
fragments.

This Dictionary of the three quarto volumes was the first edition of
the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_,--the identical work in its first
beginnings, of which the seventh edition has been so recently
completed. It was published in 1771--in the days of Goldsmith, and
Burke, and Johnson, and David Hume--several years ere Adam Smith had
given his _Wealth of Nations_ or Robertson his _History of America_ to
the public, and ere the names of Burns or Cowper had any place in
BRITISH LITERATURE.

The world has grown greatly in knowledge since that period, and the
_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ has done much more than kept pace with it
in its merits of acquirement. The three volumes have swelled into
twenty-one; and each of the twenty-one contains at least one-third
more of matter than each of the three. The growth and proportions of a
work of genius seem to be very little dependent on the period of its
production. Shakespeare may be regarded as the founder of the English
drama. He wrote at a time when art was rude, and science comparatively
low. All agree, at least, that the subjects of Queen Victoria know a
very great deal which was not known by the subjects of Queen
Elizabeth. There was no gas burned in front of the Globe Theatre, nor
was the distant roar of a _locomotive_ ever heard within its dingy
recesses; nor did ever adventurous aeronaut look down from his dizzy
elevation of miles on its tub-like proportions, or its gay flag of
motley. And yet we question whether even Mr. Wakley himself, with all
his advantages, would venture to do more than assert his equality with
the Swan of Avon. Homer, too, wrote in a very remote period,--so very
remote and so very uncertain, that the critics have begun seriously to
doubt whether the huge figure of the blind old man, as it looms
through the grey obscure of ages, be in reality the figure of one
poet, or of a whole school of poets rolled up into a bundle. But
though men fight much more scientifically now than they did at Troy,
and know much more about the taking and defending of walled towns, no
poet of the present day greatly excels Homer,--no, not the Scotch
schoolma