slow growth." So is taste; so is a love of knowledge for its own sake. Let us make real instruction as attractive as we can; but let us have no compromises under the pretence of gilding the pill. Study is study, and amusement is amusement. Let the people learn, and learn they will, in time; but let us abandon all the old, childish attempts of cheating them into learning. The circle of those who are attaining sound knowledge is steadily widening. Already, as the circle has widened, the means of acquiring information have been offered to "the masses," and even to "the needy," at a rate of cheapness quite unequalled by any previous attempts to make sound knowledge popular. We now especially allude to 'The Penny Cyclopædia'—a work of which the literature and engravings alone cost the publisher, as he has recorded, the large sum of 42,000_l._ Those who affect to believe that nothing has been done for the cheapening of books, should recollect that, before the existence of this Cyclopædia, no great work of reference of this nature could be obtained under 40_l._ But 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' large as was its sale, was not profitable; it involved an enormous loss. The writer, in his 'Struggles of a Book,' has stated that the paper-duty operated as a burthen upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia' to the extent of 32,000_l._ He adds,—"Had that sum of 32,000_l._ been actually saved to me, I should not have been a pound richer by the publication of 'The Penny Cyclopædia.' But with the saving I should not have been to that amount poorer." Compared with the vast outlay, 'The Penny Cyclopædia' was set at too low a price for the probable demand. The class of buyers for instruction was not large enough to carry off 40,000 copies, which would have yielded adequate profit. The very word "Penny" was then repulsive, and implied something low, as apprehended by the rich vulgar. Moreover, the book occupied eleven years in its issue, and its sale fell from 50,000 at the beginning to less than 20,000 in the end. No work that occupied more than four or five years in its completion was ever successful in this country. In the publication of 'The English Cyclopædia,' which is founded upon 'The Penny Cyclopædia,' a more prudent course has been adopted. The new book is issued in four divisions, which will form four separate Cyclopædias of Geography, Natural History, Sciences, and Biography, each of which will be completed in little more than two years from its commencement. Comparing the two books—'The Penny' and 'The English'—we can readily see the vast augmentations of knowledge during twenty years that render the complete re-modelling of such a work absolutely necessary. In every branch of exact knowledge this re-modelling has become indispensable; and upon other works of instruction many earnest labourers are so engaged. Publishers cannot now afford to let their books, especially their educational books, remain without improvement. It is thus that, in spite