encyclopA|dias better than nothing, which are very cheap. You can pick up
an edition of the old EncyclopA|dia Americana, in twelve volumes, for ten
or twelve dollars. Or you can buy Appleton's, which is really quite good,
for sixty dollars a set. I do not mean to have you rest on any
encyclopA|dia, but you will find one at the start an excellent guide-post.
Suppose you have the old EncyclopA|dia Americana. You will find there that
the "Roman Catholic Church" is treated by two writers,--one a Protestant,
and one a Catholic. Read both, and note in your book such allusions as
interest you, which you want more light upon. Do not note everything which
you do not know, for then you cannot get forward. But note all that
specially interests you. For instance, it seems that the Roman Catholic
Church is not so called by that church itself. The officers of that church
might call it the Roman church, or the Catholic church, but would not call
it the Roman Catholic church. At the Congress of Vienna, Cardinal Consalvi
objected to the joint use of the words Roman Catholic church. Do you know
what the Congress of Vienna was? No? then make a memorandum, if you want
to know. We might put in another for Cardinal Consalvi. He was a man, who
had a father and mother, perhaps brothers and sisters. He will give us a
little human interest, if we stop to look him up. But do not stop for him
now. Work through "Roman Catholic Church," and keep these memoranda in
your book for another day.

2. Quite different from the encyclopA|dia is another book of reference,
"Poole's Index." This is a general index to seventy-three magazines and
reviews, which were published between the years 1802 and 1852. Now a great
deal of the best work of this century has been put into such journals. A
reference, then, to "Poole's Index" is a reference to some of the best
separate papers on the subjects which for fifty years had most interest
for the world of reading men and women. Let us try "Poole's Index" on "The
Republic of Venice." There are references to articles on Venice in the New