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Not only have the editors recognized the vital importance of a well-balanced and judicious selection, but they have also taken into account such an arrangement of the matter as will be most entertaining to the ordinary reader.

From the earliest days of cyclopædia-making the simple alphabetical classification has been the most easy for ready reference, and in connection with the arrangement of the Literature of the World this method produces a very happy combination of different periods of literature in the same volume. Thus in each volume there is secured a certain variety, and the heaviness or sameness of a mass of antique, classical, or mediæval material is avoided, and the reader obtains a sense of the varieties and contrasts of different periods.

If any one, therefore, will study this collection with care and will read it consecutively, he will find each volume of equal interest and a delightful variety of matter that will stimulate a desire to make further inquiries along the same lines throughout the different volumes, since an adequate and detailed means of reference will be found given in the Index.

He also obtains from it at once a comprehensive view of the evolution of literature from the earliest times down to the present day, and will make himself familiar with the life and thought and intellectual activity of many ages and many nations.

In no other way can so much compact information be acquired, while the acquisition of it, so far from being a laborious task, will prove a continual source of interest and instruction.

In the preparation of this Library the editors have had at their disposal every possible facility for the satisfactory carrying out of their difficult and very comprehensive plan. They have received the assistance and advice and criticism of famous literary workers in the various departments. They have had before them, as already stated, the results of many years of labor by specialists in every possible field. They have familiarized themselves, moreover, with the conclusions of the soundest critics,

and in making every selection they have been guided by the broadest and sanest view of what literature really stands for. At the same time they have preserved their own critical independence, and have exercised their own judgment with a view to making this presentation of the world's most famous literature harmonious, proportionate, and at the same time of practical value, bearing continuously in mind the needs of the general reader also, to whom this series of volumes is to be the means of what may be truly styled a liberal education.

Down Rusalitoury

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 1898.

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