Excerpt from Encyclopedia Americana, Vol. 1: A Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography, Brought Down to the Present Time; Including a Copious Collection of Original Articles in American Biography In comparia with the present state of the world, how small was the theatre on which the gods of Grecian fable and the heroes of Grecian his tory. Performed their parts in that interesting drama! During the period of Roman history, it is true, the field of civilization had become much more enlarged; but, in our own times, it has extended over both hemi spheres, and science gathers contributions from every quarter of the globe. It. Is therefore become necessary, that every well-informed man, who would keep his relative place during this advance of society, should possess himself of many kinds of knowledge, which might have been dis pensed with in former periods; the different sciences and arts, closely connected as they have ever been, having now more common bonds of union than in any preceding age. Considerations of this nature induced the German editors to project a work, which should furnish the general reader with all the information, that should be necessary to make him acquainted with the events and discoveries of interest, which did not happen to fall within the range of his particular studies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.