Enyclcopaedia of Humanities

The design of the compilers has been to furnish the reading community, and more especially the large class of students in colleges and seminaries of learning, with a comprehensive handbook or lexicon of all branches of Humanities. A work of this kind has long been needed. The great aim of all modern systems of instruction is to present knowledge in as concise and accessible a form as possible, and bring the results of many different theories and systems into forms of practical convenience. In this respect the present work will be found adapted to the purposes of the author, the artist, the student of any learned profession and the reader. No technical term of general use in any of the departments it includes will be found wanting, while many words, which in a strict sense belong neither to literature nor art, have been added on account of some peculiar association or application. In Literature, the work embraces all terms of logic and rhetoric, criticism, style, and language; sketches of works which stand as types of their age or tongue; reviews of all systems of philosophy and theology, both of ancient and modern times; and a complete series of the history of literature among all nations, made up wholly from original sources. All the most important terms of common and international law, all technical words and phrases employed in theology and philosophy, and a number of scientific and historical phrases, which have become familiarized in literature, have been included. In Art, the department of painting, sculpture, and architecture, have been treated as fully and carefully as the nature and limits of the work would permit. While a mere technical array of terms has been avoided, care has been taken to explain all the words; and phrases of art-criticism have been defined at some length, as of interest and value to the general reader, especially since criticism has been recognized as a distinct department of literature. All words relating to the art and practice of music have been likewise retained. The work, therefore, as it now stands, is intended to furnish a thorough vocabulary of Art and Literature, specially designed for the use of schools, colleges, and the general reading community.