ENAMEL 



2030 



ENCYCLOPEDIA 



and enabling the inhabitants to hold a con- 

 stitutional convention and draft a constitution 

 to be submitted to Congress for approval. In 

 Canada a province is formed by act of the 

 Dominion Parliament, approved by the King 

 in Council, but this is not usually termed an 

 enabling act. 



ENAMEL, en am' el, a glasslike glaze of 

 various colors fused to the surface of gold, 

 silver, copper, iron and other substances. 

 Enameling is one of the decorative arts, seen 

 at its best in association with the jewelers', 

 goldsmiths' and coppersmiths' work. Enamel 

 painters have always cherished their art as 

 something apart and independent, and many 

 beautiful things have been done with it, from 

 the jewel-rich panels of Nardon Penicaud, an 

 artist of Limoges, to the finely-finished por- 

 traits of Leonard Limousin and the exquisite 

 miniatures by Jean Petitot. 



The art of enameling is of great antiquity, 

 for it was practiced by the Assyrians and the 

 Egyptians. Since then all countries have in- 

 terested themselves in the art. Distinguished 

 with reference to the manner of execution, 

 enamel-work is generally divided into four 

 kinds: 



(1) The Cloisonn^, or Inclosed, the method of 

 the Byzantine school, In which the design is 

 formed in a kind of metal case of gold or cop- 

 per and the colors separated by delicate filigree 

 gold bands ; 



(2) The Champleve, practiced by the Rhenish 

 and early Limoges schools, in which the figures 

 to be filled in with color are cut in the metal to 

 some depth and the colors separated by a thin 

 partition of the metal to prevent running into 

 each other when fired ; 



(3) Translucent enamel, which had its origin 

 and was brought to great perfection in Italy, 

 composed of transparent enamel of every variety 

 of color laid in thin coatings over the design, 

 which was incised on the metal ; 



(4) Surface-painted enamels, in which the 

 metal plate was covered with a coating of dark 

 enamel for shadows and painted on this with 

 white, the colors being laid on with a hair-pencil 

 and fixed by firing. 



The best of the artistic enamel work of the 

 present day comes from the Japanese, but 

 from China and India also come some fine 

 examples. Enamel is also now used for glaz- 

 ing the cheaper varieties of pottery and for 

 coating iron vessels for domestic purposes. A 

 great variety of articles, such as grate-fronts, 

 clock dials, panels of different kinds, bedsteads, 

 name plates, etc., are also executed in enam- 

 eled iron. 



ENCYCLOPEDIA, ensiklope'dia, or CY- 

 CLOPEDIA, a term which comes from the 



Greek word meaning circle, originally used to 

 denote the group of arts and sciences without 

 study of which no freeman was considered 

 really educated. From this the word came to 

 mean books dealing with these studies, and 

 so in time took on its present significance of 

 a work in which the various branches of learn- 

 ing are treated in separate articles, usually 

 alphabetically arranged. Of such works of 

 reference in the modern sense the ancients 

 knew nothing. A scholar might set down for 

 the use of students all of his information on 

 any subject or on all subjects, but no attempts 

 were made to cover the entire field of human 

 knowledge or to have different portions of 

 such works contributed by specialists. For 

 instance, a Roman named Varro, who died 

 about 25 B. c., produced a work in nine vol- 

 umes, each of which was devoted to some one 

 subject, and the elder Pliny wrote a famous 

 Natural History which purported to give all 

 that was known of the natural sciences. This 

 is the oldest work of an encyclopedic char- 

 acter. 



During the Middle Ages several works of a 

 similar kind appeared, but all were arranged 

 topically, and none of them were systematic. 

 The name Encyclopedia was first used in 1559, 

 and in the next century appeared the first 

 work in which the subjects were alphabetically 

 presented. This was the Dictionnaire his- 

 torique, published in 1674 by Louis Moreri, 

 which was immediately successful and passed 

 through several editions. Bayle's Dictionnaire 

 historique et critique, which appeared in 1697, 

 was the most noteworthy work of that charac- 

 ter which had been published up to that time, 

 and attained considerable success in English 

 translations. 



In 1704 the first work in English was issued 

 which deserved the name of encyclopedia 

 the Lexicon Technicum, or an Universal Eng- 

 lish Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, but this 

 was far surpassed by Chambers' Cyclopedia, 

 which appeared in 1728. History and biogra- 

 phy were omitted, but the cross-reference sys- 

 tem was used in this work. A translation of 

 Chambers' work was the first encyclopedia 

 issued in Italian, and, far more important, a 

 French translation was the basis for the famous 

 encyclopedia of Diderot, D'Alembert and their 

 associates. This was more than an encyclo- 

 pedia, for the authors used it as a means for 

 expressing their own political and religious 

 principles. 



In 1771 there appeared a work which has 



