DAMBELL & MOORE and GEORGE COOLIDGE, Printers, 16 Devonshire Street, Boston.

Board of Editors

FOR 1857.

A. M. GAY, RESIDENT EDITOR.

Postage any distance in the United States, Twelve Cents per Year, payable in advance. DAMRELL & MOORE and GEORGE COOLIDGE, Printers, 16 Devonshire Street, Boston,

WEBSTER'S QUARTO DICTIONARY,

Contains three times the matter found in any other English Dictionary compiled in this country.

Ask for Webster's Quarto Unabriged. There is no edition of Webster's Unabridged Dictionary but this-none containing half the matter, the illustrative quotations, the etymologies, full definitions, &c.

"A Dictionary is the last book which a scholar ever wants to have abridged, the process being sure to cut off the THE VERY MATTER WHICH HE MOST VALUES."-Chron otype.

JUST PUBLISHED,

WEBSTER'S COUNTING HOUSE AND FAMILY

DICTIONARY,

Being a Defining and Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language. With Synonyms. PRICE, $1.50.

This is an entirely new work, designed to furnish means of training in English Composition, while it also answers the purpose of an ordinary abridged Dictionary.

To those wishing a less expensive Dictionary than Webster's Unabridged, the low price of the Counting House and Family Dictionary, possessing the new features indicated above, makes it the most desirable work of the kind in the market. We respectfully invite attention to the work.

Springfield, Mass., Jan., 1857.

G. & C. MERRIAM.

Sold by all Booksellers.

RECENT

TESTIMONY.

FROM ELIHU BURRITT.

NEW BRITAIN, CT., July 23, 1856. MESSES. G. & C. MERRIAM-Gentlemen: - I would heartily congratulate you for being the publishers of Webster's great Dictionary, which may be regarded as bearing the same relation to the English Language, which Newton's "Principia", does to the sublime science of Natural Philosophy. Indeed, in some respects, this comparison hardly does it justice. That work of his long life's study and prodigious industry is coming to be recognized as the first authority and most copious treasury of the language, in the birth-land of our mother tongue. An American may well feel an emotion of honest pride at seeing it, as he may, in the libraries of British Statesmen, and of distinguished literati of that country. But he should regard with richer satisfaction the fact, that such a work, with its vast treasures all unabridged, lies like a great encyclopædia of living knowledge, in many of the Common School Libraries of America. Let him travel the world over, and he will not find in any other country such a production domesticated, as it were, with hooks prepared for the instruction of the young. There are several facts and features distinguishing Webster's Great Dictionary, which must establish its reputation, and enhance its value to all the generations of the Anglo-Saxon race, when their multitudinous millions shall cover and bless the earth with their institutions. It has not only collected every word known to the language at the present time, but has also given its ethnical genealogy, as well as precise significance. It has threaded with keen-eyed exploration, every Celtic, Saxon, Danish, Norman, Latin, Greek, and Oriental rivulet that has brought down a root or seed-word from the babel wilderness of tongues, to enrich or variegate our own. These meandering tributaries, all the way to their dim source, bear the foot-prints of Webster's patient search. Thus he has brought down to us the history of the English language for the first thousand years of its existence. It will be comparatively an easy task for the future Lexicographer to continue it; for he will have merely to analyze and define those elements which the language shall absorb, as it makes the tour of the world and replaces its heathen tongues with that in which probably all the families of mankind will sing the Psalms of the Millennium. Thus Webster not only wrought all the elements which a thousand years have contributed to the English language into a magnificent structure, and left a model and measure for the Lexicographer of the future generations of our Anglo-Saxon race, but he also bequeathed to the Philologists of other living tongues a chart which they must be constrained to follow. They cannot compare his Great Dictionary with their best Lexicons, without being struck with the difference of condition developed by the contrast. Whatever German or French Lexicographers may have done for Greek, Latin, Arabic, and other Oriental tongues, they have exhibited but little of the Webster cast of energy and investigation in analyzing the elements and history of their own languages,

There is another interesting feature of Webster's work. Thousands of young persons, while tracing up words of common use, to their Teutonic, Norman, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew origin, must be stimulated by curiosity or more useful sentiments, to pursue the investigation further-to know more of those languages which have contributed to the fulness and variety of their own. I am persuaded that this particular influence will, ere long, become perceptible upon the Common Schools and Educational Institutions of this country, in which this incomparable Dictionary shall be freely used. Multitudes will derive from it their first impulse toward the ac quisition of other languages, ancient and modern. Yours truly, ELIHU BURRITT.