The Children's Cyclopaedia. Edited by Arthur Mee. 8 vols. (Carmelite
House. £2 17s.)—This work, which has been appearing for some time in numbers, is now published as a whole. Eight volumes containing five thousand three hundred and seventy-six double-columned pages make up a formidable total. We cannot pretend to appraise it; we cannot even describe it ; the table of contents in each volume covers a couple of pages, and the editor warns his readers that it is not and cannot be complete. We may say that it is not a cyclopaedia in form. All the branches of human knowledge are not arranged in alphabetical order and dis- cussed. What we have is a collection of all kinds of things grave and gay,—natural history, Bible stories, biographies, poetry, travel, legends, &c. We have been told that, as a matter of fact, the publication has made itself popular among the readers for whom it is intended, and, after such an inspection as we have been able to give, we can easily believe it.
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