The above portrait of the author of _The American Spelling-Book_, of which there have been sold thirty millions of copies, and of the _American Dictionary_, of which his publishers have hopes of selling as great a number, is very life-like; it is from a painting by Professor Morse, and the last time we saw the veteran scholar and schoolmaster, he wore the very expression caught by that always successful artist. Noah Webster's is the most universally familiar name in our history; every body, from first to second childhood, from end to end and side to side of the continent, knows it as well as his own; and he who made it so famous was worthy of his reputation. Noah Webster was born in Hartford, Connecticut, October 16th, 1758. He was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Webster, one of the first settlers of Hartford, and afterwards governor of the colony. In 1774 he was admitted to Yale College. His studies were frequently interrupted during the Revolution, and for a time he himself served as a volunteer in the army, with his father and two brothers. He graduated, with honor, in 1778, in the same class with Joel Barlow, Oliver Wolcott, Uriah Tracy, and other distinguished men, and immediately opened a school, residing meanwhile in the family of Oliver Ellsworth, afterward chief justice of the United States. He soon commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in 1781; but the poverty and unsettled state of the country prevented any immediate success in the courts, and he resumed the business of instruction in 1782, at Goshen, Orange county, New-York. It was here that he began the preparation of books for the schools. He was led to do so in despondency of success in his profession; but it changed the course of his life. Having exhibited the rude sketch of his initial effort to Mr. Madison (afterwards President), and Dr. Stanhope Smith, Professor in Princeton college, he was encouraged by them to publish the "First Part of a Grammatical Institute of the English Language." The second and third parts of the series soon followed. A generation has not passed since some of these books were occasionally seen in New England. It may be that here and there a copy may still be lurking in the garret of some ancient family, or on the dusty shelves of a collector of antiquities. There is no more striking contrast than that suggested by a comparison of Webster's "Third Part," as it was familiarly styled, with the admirably printed school books now in every family. Webster's were the first school books published in the United States. In 1847 twenty-four million copies of the Spelling Book had been sold, and for several years the demand for it has been at the rate of a million a year.