THE LITERATURE OF THE WORLD..

THE

AMERICAN ECLECTIC:

OR

A SELECTION FROM THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE OF ALL FOREIGN COUNTRIES.

CONDUCTED

BY ABSALOM PETERS, D. D., AND SELAH B. TREAT, Editors of the American Biblical Repository:

AIDED BY AN ASSOCIATION OF LITERARY AND PROFESSIONAL' GEN

TLEMEN.

SINCE issuing the Prospectus which was prefixed to the April No. of the Repository, the present editor has succeeded in making the most satisfactory arrangements for the editorial charge of the Repository and the Eclectic. He is happy to announce that the Rev. S. B. Treat, having, for reasons connected with the state of his health, asked a dismission from his late parochial charge in Newark, N. J., has engaged to become associate editor of the two works, and will enter immediately upon his labors.

Thus united, the editors hope to increase the labor and talent bestowed upon the Biblical Repository, and to render it still more worthy of its present reputation, as containing the best specimens of American research and discussion in the departments of biblical and general literature. At the same time they will devote themselves, with fresh energy, to their new work, which contemplates a general and comprehensive view of the periodical literature of the world, that of our own country alone excepted.

We have also secured the pledge of such occasional aid as may be required in the preparation of the Eclectic from a number of literary and professional gentlemen, who are familiar with the departments of learning and research, in which they will render their assistance. The names of these gentlemen will hereafter be given to the public as a guaranty of the talent and fidelity with which the materials of the work are intended to be selected and combined.

The necessity of arrangements thus enlarged will appear from the great variety of matter and the wide field of inquiry to be embraced in the contemplated publication. Its materials, with the exception of editorial remarks, are to be derived from the periodical Journals, Repositories and Reviews of all foreign countries. The selections from these numerous sources will illustrate every department of useful knowledge, literary, religious, political, biblical, historical, geographical, etc. etc.; and these selections must be so presented as to constitute a work of permanent value to the possessor. The whole field, therefore, must be surveyed in the various languages in which the Journals, etc., are published,-the English, German, French, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Modern Greek, etc. Thus to investigate the original sources of the work will require a thorough acquaintance with these several languages, and, through them, with the literature which they embrace. Such an acquaintance with the entire field. the editors cannot hope, personally, at once to possess. But with the aid already secured, and through the correspondence which they propose to open with foreign scholars and American residents in foreign lands, they have the highest confidence in their ability to construct a Periodical, on the plan proposed, more interesting and valuable than is now to be found in any language. Its articles, on every variety of important topic, selected, translated and explained, will present in our own tongue, and in a popular form, a comprehensive view of "the Literature of the World."

It will be perceived that we have slightly changed the proposed title of the work. This has been done as a matter of taste, and to express more fully its comprehensive design.

In the first Prospectus it was stated that this work would