With the true facts regarding this encyclopædia it is difficult to reconcile the encomiums of many eminent Americans who, by writing eulogistic letters to the _Britannica’s_ editor concerning the exalted merits of his enterprise, revealed either their unfamiliarity with the books in question or their ignorance of what constituted an educational reference work. These letters were duly photographed and reproduced in the advertisements, and they now make interesting, if disconcerting, reading for the non-British student who put his faith in them and bought the _Britannica_. There is no need here to quote from these letters; for a subsequent inspection of the work thus recommended must have sufficiently mortified those of the enthusiastic correspondents who were educated and had consciences; and the others would be unmoved by any revelations of mine. Mention, however, should be made of the remarks of the American Ambassador to Great Britain at the banquet given in London to celebrate the Encyclopædia’s birth. This gentleman, in an amazing burst of unrestrained laudation, said he believed that “it is the general judgment of the scholars and the investigators of the world that the one book to which they can go for the most complete, comprehensive, thorough, and absolutely precise statements of fact upon every subject of human interest is the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.” This is certainly an astonishing bit of eulogy. Its dogmatic positiveness and its assumption of infallibility caused one critic (who is also a great scholar) to write: “With all due respect for our illustrious fellow-countryman, the utterance is a most superlative absurdity, unless it was intended to be an exercise of that playful and elusive American humor which the apperceptions of our English cousins so often fail to seize, much less appreciate.” But there were other remarks of similar looseness at the banquet, and the dinner evidently was a greater success than the books under discussion.