E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
In preparing the new edition of Dr. Lord's great work, it has beenthought desirable to do what the venerable author's death in 1894 didnot permit him to accomplish, and add a volume summarizing certain broadaspects of achievement in the last fifty years. It were manifestlyimpossible to cover in any single volume--except in the dry, cyclopaedicstyle of chronicling multitudinous facts, so different from the vivid,personal method of Dr. Lord--all the growths of the wonderful periodjust closed. The only practicable way has been to follow our author'sprinciple of portraying selected historic forces,--to take, asrepresentative or typical of the various departments, certain greatcharacters whose services have signalized them as "Beacon Lights" alongthe path of progress, and to secure adequate portrayal of these by menknown to be competent for interesting exposition of the several themes.
Thus the volume opens with a paper on "Richard Wagner: Modern Music," byHenry T. Finck, the musical critic of the New York Evening Post, andauthor of various works on music, travel, etc.; and then follow in orderthese: "John Ruskin: Modern Art," by G. Mercer Adam, author of "A Précisof English History," recently editor of the Self-Culture Magazine andof the Werner Supplements to the Encyclopaedia Britannica; "HerbertSpencer: The Evolutionary Philosophy," and "Charles Darwin: His Place inModern Science," both by Mayo W. Hazeltine, literary editor of the NewYork Sun, whose book reviews over the signature "M.W.H." have for yearsmade the Sun's book-page notable; "John Ericsson: Navies of War andCommerce," by Prof. W.F. Durand, of the School of Marine Engineering andthe Mechanic Arts in Cornell University; "Li Hung Chang: The Far East,"by Dr. William A. P. Martin, the distinguished missionary, diplomat, andauthor, recently president of the Imperial University, Peking, China;"David Livingstone: African Exploration," by Cyrus C. Adams,geographical and historical expert, and a member of the editorial staffof the New York Sun; "Sir Austen H. Layard: Modern Archaeology," byRev. William Hayes Ward, D.D., editor of The Independent, New York,himself eminent in Oriental exploration and decipherment; "MichaelFaraday: Electricity and Magnetism," by Prof. Edwin J. Houston ofPhiladelphia, an accepted authority in electrical engineering; and,"Rudolf Virchow: Modern Medicine and Surgery," by Dr. Frank P. Foster,physician, author, and editor of the New York Medical Journal.
The selection of themes must be arbitrary, amid the numberless lines ofdevelopment during the "New Era" of the Nineteenth Century, in whichevery mental, moral, and physical science and art has grown anddiversified and fructified with a rapidity seen in no other fivecenturies. It is hoped, however, that the choice will be justified bythe interest of the separate papers, and that their result will be sucha view of the main features as to leave a distinct impression of thegeneral life and advancement