From this long conflict Dr. Worcester has unquestionably come off victorious. Dr. Webster seemed to assume that he had a kind of monopoly in the English language, and that whoever ventured to compile a dictionary was guilty of infringing his patent-right. He drew up a list of words, and triumphantly asked Dr. Worcester where he had found them, unless in his two quartos of 1828. Dr. Worcester replied by showing that most of the words were to be found in previous English dictionaries, and added, with sly humor, that he freely acknowledged Dr. Webster's exclusive property in the word "bridegoom," and others like it, which would be sought for vainly in any volumes but his own. Dr. Webster's attack was as unfair as the result of it was unfortunate for himself. We have several reasons, which seem to us sufficient, for preferring Dr. Worcester's Dictionary; but we are not, on that account, disposed to underrate the remarkable merits of its rival. Dr. Webster was a man of vigorous mind, and endowed with a genuine faculty of independent thinking. He has hardly received justice at the hands of his countrymen, a large portion of whom have too hastily taken a few obstinate whimsies as the measure of his powers. Utterly fanciful as are many of his etymologies, we should be false to our duty as critics, if we did not acknowledge that Dr. Webster possessed in very large measure the chief qualities which go to the making of a great philologist. The very tendency to theorize, which led him to adopt those oddities of spelling by which he may be said to be chiefly known, united as it was to an understanding of uncommon breadth and clearness, would under more favorable auspices have given him a very eminent place among the philosophic students of language. His great mistake was in attempting to force his peculiar notions upon the world in his Dictionary, instead of confining them to his Preface, or putting them forward tentatively in a separate treatise. The importance which he attached to these trifles ought to have given him a hint that others might be as obstinate on the other side, and that the prejudices of taste have much tougher roots than those of opinion. We are inclined to think that many of the changes proposed by Dr. Webster will be adopted in the course of time. But it is a matter of little consequence, and the progress of such reforms is slow. Already two hundred years ago, James Howel (the author of Charles Lamb's favorite "Epistolae Ho-Elianae") advocated similar reforms, and, as far as the printers would let him, carried them out in practice. "The printer hath not bin so careful as he should have bin," he complains. He especially condemns the superfluous letters in many of our words, choosing to write _don_, _com_, and _som_, rather than _done_, _come_, and _some_. "Moreover," he says, "those words that have the Latin for their original, the author prefers that orthography rather than the French, whereby divers