We said that the title "American Dictionary of the English Language" was an absurdity. Fancy a "Cuban Dictionary of the Spanish Language." It would be of value only to the comparative philologist, curious in the changes of meaning, pronunciation, and the like, which circumstances are always bringing about in languages subjected to new conditions of life and climate. But we must not forget to say that the title chosen by Dr. Webster conveyed also a meaning creditable to his spirit and judgment. He always stoutly maintained the right of English as spoken in America to all the privileges of a living language. In opposition to the purists who would have clasped the language forever within the covers of Johnson, he insisted on the necessity of coining new words or adapting old ones to express new things and new relations. It is many years since we read his "Remarks" (if that was the title) on Pickering's "Vocabulary," and in answer to the rather supercilious criticisms on himself in the "Anthology"; but the impression left on our mind by that pamphlet is one of great respect for the good sense, acuteness, and courage of its author. And of his Dictionary it may safely be said, that, with all its mistakes, no work of the kind had then appeared so learned and so comprehensive. It may be doubted if any living language possessed at that time a dictionary, or one, at least, the work of a single man, in all respects its equal. But etymologies are not the most important part of a good working dictionary, the intention of which is not to inform readers and writers what a word may have meant before the Dispersion, but what it means now. The pedigree of an adjective or substantive is of little consequence to ninety-nine men in a hundred, and the writers who have wielded our mother-tongue with the greatest mastery have been men who knew what words had most meaning to their neighbors and acquaintances, and did not stay their pens to ask what ideas the radicals of those words may possibly have conveyed to the mind of a bricklayer going up from Padanaram to seek work on the Tower of Babel. A thoroughly good etymological dictionary of English is yet to seek; and even if we should ever get one, it will be for students, and not for the laity. Nor is it the primary object of a common dictionary to trace the history of the language. Of great interest and importance to scholars, it is of comparatively little to Smith and Brown and their children at the public school. It is a work apart, which we hope to see accomplished by the London Philological Society in a manner worthy of comparison with what has been partly done for German by the brothers Grimm,--alas that the illustrious duality should have been broken by death! A lexicon of that kind should be an index to all the more eminent books in the language; but we do not hold this to be the office of a dictionary for daily reference. A dictionary that should embrace