e in triumphal procession after the Caesar who has
mastered them. Thus, it does not seem at all strange that we should have
a book professing to guide us through all the intricacies of general
literature; indeed, now that the work is put into our hands, it seems so
easy of accomplishment that the only marvel would appear to be that we
have had none hitherto. Yet the conditions necessary to such a work are
of the rarest to be found; not so rare, indeed, when each is considered
separately, but rarely to be met with in combination.

In order even to attempt a work of this nature, its utility must first
be fully appreciated; but, unfortunately, those whose need is the
greatest, as being immediately present, would on that very account be
incompetent to supply the need, while those who by dint of patient study
have brought themselves up to the point of competency for the task no
longer realize the want,--just as men who have become rich by industry
forget the necessities of poverty, which were the earliest spurs upon
their energy.

The great majority of readers, therefore, have good reason to thank
Mrs. Botta, that, after having met a great educational need in her own
experience, she has benevolently set about supplying the same need in
the experience of others. The same motive which has led her to do
this has also made her work, from the peculiar manner in which it is
conducted, an important contribution toward a more perfect educational
system than generally prevails; though we would not do her the injustice
to imply that what she has done claims merit on this account alone or
chiefly. It _does_ claim merit in this way, and of a very high order,
because it avoids a prominent fault that vitiates most works intended to
promote the general diffusion of knowledge. The fault referred to is the
same which De Quincey, in a note to his "Political Economy," has called
the greatest vice of teaching,--namely, that the teacher does not
readily enter into, as an inheritance, the difficulties of the pupil.
Merely to have corrected this fault, to have met the popular mind
half-way and upon its own ground, was to furnish an important condition
hitherto lacking in the field chosen.

The extent of the work--embracing, as it does, the whole field of
literature--imposes other and more difficult conditions. Originality,
in any primary sense, was of course an impossibility; a single lifetime
would not suffice even for the most cursory examinat