rprise no one less than the author. Attention
has elsewhere been publicly called, in particular, to the fact that Owen
Meredith is given as the pseudonyme of Sir Bulwer Lytton instead of his
son, E. R. Bulwer: this would seem to be a bad blunder, but we
understand that it was a mere error of oversight, and that it was
corrected before the Dictionary was fairly in the market. If other
mistakes should be brought to light,--and what work of such multiplicity
was ever free from them?--Mr. Wheeler will doubtless call to mind,
and his readers must not forget, the eloquent excuse which Dr.
Johnson offers, in the preface to his Dictionary, for his own
shortcomings:--"That sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise
vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses
of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in
vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which yesterday he
knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his
thoughts to-morrow." The "Pronouncing Vocabularies of Modern
Geographical and Biographical Names, by J. Thomas, M. D.," are evidently
the product of laborious and conscientious research; and, while we
differ widely from Dr. Thomas on various points, general and particular,
we must allow that his vocabularies are as yet the only ones of the kind
which approximate with any nearness to the character of an authoritative
standard. The other Vocabularies or "Tables" of the Appendix seem also
to have been prepared with sound judgment and much painstaking, but we
cannot dwell upon them.

To sum up, in all the essential points of a good dictionary,--in the
amplitude and selectness of its vocabulary, in the fulness and
perspicacity of its definitions, in its orthoepy and (_cum grano salis_)
its orthography, in its new and trustworthy etymologies, in the
elaborate, but not too learned treatises of its Introduction, in its
carefully prepared and valuable appendices,--briefly, in its general
accuracy, completeness, and practical utility,--the work is one which
none who read or write can henceforward afford to dispense with.

Mindful of the old adage, we have instituted no comparison between
Webster and Worcester. If the latter, excellent as it is, should now be
found in some respects inferior to the former, it is to be remembered
that the present edition of Webster has the great advantage of being
four or five years later in point of time, and that it ha