Webster’s Dictionary.—A new quarto edition of Webster’s Dictionary, with additions by Professor Goodrich, has recently been issued by G. & C. Merriam, of Springfield, and is for sale in this city by booksellers generally. Study of the Dictionary is the great want of a majority of American writers. They neither drink at the sources nor draw from the depths of the language, to supply the thirst for purity, variety, and force of expression, with which truly masculine minds are panting. With a vocabulary equal to the largest demands of truth in its labors, or of imagination in its play, we find constantly recurring the same set-phrases, the same commonplaces, the same worn-out figures. Our college-bred men are not deficient in a Johnsonian stock of Latin derivatives, but into the Saxon mine of our tongue, few of them have ever delved. They are too indolent to open the record and search for the treasures bequeathed to them. Until Webster’s researches and toils brought these treasures together, they were so far hidden and scattered, that few even of the learned appreciated their amount. Thirty-five years he spent in the compilation of his Dictionary; and since the publication of the first edition, it has been enriched by himself and the present editor with thousands of words; and it is now, by the consent of the learned in England as well as this country, valuable above every other, for comprehensiveness, etymological accuracy, and clearness of verbal definitions. The new quarto contains the whole matter of the former editions in two volumes, printed with clear type, on good paper, and substantially bound. It is one of the few books, of which a threadbare recommendation may be truly repeated—“no library is complete without it.” One of the most distinguished of American writers, whose choice of fresh and forceful words has at times brought upon him a charge of pedantry, but who in fact has only used fearlessly the wealth of the language, told us, some years ago, that it was his habit to read the Dictionary through about once every year. To the student, this practice may be commended as of inestimable service. A single word is often the cue to a sentiment or a train of ideas worthy of expression. As the mind is full of words to give variety to its pictures, so will it be full of suggestions for new subjects. The relation between words and ideas is to a degree an absolute identity. An illiterate person sits down to write a letter. His fund of language being small, the paucity of his thoughts is in the same proportion. He may have traveled half over the world, yet he has nothing to say to his friends at home, except that he is well, and hopes they are the same. Our young writers may find in this illustration a reason for studying the Dictionary faithfully and continually. Not from the conversation of the educated, or from miscellaneous books alone, will they catch by accident the riches of the language. They must