a systematic view of the whole extent of human knowledge or of particular departments of it, with the subjects arranged generally in alphabetical order. Varro and Pliny the Elder, among the Romans, attempted works of an encyclopedic nature, the latter in his well-known Historia Naturalis, or Natural History. Other ancient encyclopedic works were those of Stobeus, Suidas, Isidorus and Marcianus Capella. In the thirteenth century a work on a regular plan was compiled by the Dominican Vincent of Beauvais, in which was exhibited the whole sum of the knowledge of the Middle Ages. This work was called Speculum Majus, or Speculum Triplex (triple mirror) and was avowedly a digest of earlier works. The first compilation to which the name encyclopedia was given was one published in 1559 by Paul Scalich. A Latin encyclopedia, published by Heinrich Alsted in 1630, purported to tell all that was known of all the sciences, and it was long the standard work of its class. These early works, while crude and unsystematic, were yet a step in the right direction toward the classification of knowledge. The subjects were arranged topically in these works, and it was not until 1674 that an important work with its subjects arranged alphabetically was issued. This was the Dictionnaire historique (historical dictionary) of Louis Moreri, which included articles on historical, mythological, genealogical and biographical subjects. In 1697 appeared Bayle's famous Dictionnaire historique et critique, which in its later revisions is still of value. The first English alphabetical encyclopedia was the Lexicon Technicum; or an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, published in 1704. Ephraim Chambers published in 1728 his Cyclopaedia; or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, which had some distinctive features, especially the use of cross-references to facilitate topical reading, and which had considerable influence on succeeding works of its kind, both in England and on the Continent. The famous French Encyclopedie, edited by Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau and others, was intended at first as a translation and revision of Chambers' work, but grew into something much more ambitious (See DIDEROT, DENIS). Of a somewhat different type from the dictionary style of encyclopedia, described above, is the Encyclopaedia Britannica, first published in 1768, which laid stress on important articles on general subjects, rather than on numerous short articles on the subdivisions of these subjects. Besides those mentioned above, the chief encyclopedias in English include a new edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia, in ten volumes; the Encyclopedia Americana, in sixteen volumes; Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia, in eight volumes; later editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the latest in twenty-four volumes, and the New International Encyclopaedia, in twenty volumes. Of French encyclopedias the most important are the Encyclopedie des gens du monde; the Encyclopedie moderne, and the Encyclopedie du XIX eme siecle. The German Konversations-Lexikon of Brockhaus, in seventeen volumes, and the Konversations-Lexikon of Meyer, in eighteen volumes, with supplementary numbers, are among the best and most scholarly of any encyclopedias. The Chinese encyclopedia, complete in 5040 volumes, is one of the most remarkable literary under-takings ever projected, and has twenty volumes of index alone.