and must be whipt till they mend their ways." The child brought up on Dilworth is practiced until nearly the last page of the work upon the lesson of the first sentence, with variations. Other differences would be suggested at once by the use of the two books. In Dilworth the child learns all manner of English proper names and abbreviations likely to be of use, such as Ldp., Bp., Rt. Wpful, Rt. Honble, Ast. P.G.C. and P.M.G.C., the last two standing, as the reader has of course already guessed, for Astronomy Professor of Gresham College, and Professor of Music at Gresham College, which we politely take to have been Tho. Dilworth's Alma Mater. In a note at the foot of the column, T. D. adds: "It argues a disrespect and slighting to use contractions to our betters." The character of this torture of the innocent was probably determined by the use for which it was intended in England, as indicated by Mr. Dilworth's dedication "To the Reverend and Worthy Promoters of the several Charity Schools in Great Britain and Ireland."

Webster's Institute, on the other hand, was plainly meant for the farmer boys and girls of his country. "The spelling-book," he says in one of his essays, "does more to form the language of a nation than all other books," and the man who first supplied our young nation with a spelling-book has undoubtedly affected its spelling habits more than any other single person. But Webster was a moralist and a philosopher as well as a speller. He was by no means restricted in his ambition to the teaching of correct spelling; he aimed to have a hand in the moulding of the national mind and the national manners. In his preface to "The American Spelling-Book," he says: "To diffuse an uniformity and purity of language in America, to destroy the provincial prejudices that originate in the trifling differences of dialect and produce reciprocal ridicule, to promote the interest of literature and the harmony of the United States, is the most earnest wish of the author, and it is his highest ambition to deserve the approbation and encouragement of his countrymen." His spelling-book, accordingly, in its early editions contained a number of sharp little warnings in the form of footnotes, which imply that he seized the young nation just in time to prevent the perpetuation of vulgar errors, since these, if they once became universal, would have compelled the hereditary Webster to make them the basis of orthoepic canons. Thus, ax is reprobated when ask is intended; Americans were to say wainscot, not winch-cott; resin, not rozum; chimney, not chimbly; confiscate, not confisticate. Since these warnings disappeared after a few years it may be presumed that he regarded the immediate danger as passed; but the more substantial matters of good morals came to have greater prominence, and in addition to the columns of classified words, which constitute almost the sole contents of the earliest edition, there came to be inserted those fables and moral and industrial injunctions, with sly reminders of the virtue of Washington, which have sunk into the soft minds of generations of Americans. There was a Federal catechism, and a good deal of geographical knowledge regarding counties and county towns, to be taken economically in the form of spelling lessons. The successive editions became way-marks of the progress of the nation, and so important did the book rapidly become that though its compiler was fast throwing off the bondage of Anglican spelling, he never dared to make the book conform to his own principles; venturing only to hint in his preface at the orthographic reform which he longed to make. "The spelling," he says, "of such words as publick, favour, neighbour, head, prove, phlegm, his, give, debt, rough, well, instead of the more natural and easy method: public, favor, nabor, hed, proov, flem, hiz, giv, det, ruf, wel, has the plea of antiquity in its favor; and yet I am convinced that common sense and convenience will sooner or later get the better of the present absurd practice."

The pictures which came to bring art as an adjunct in impressing the young mind were of the order already familiar in the New England Primer, ingenuous in their simple straightforwardness and of uncompromising faithfulness to nature. The fable of the Boy that stole Apples, which I have never been able to trace back of Webster, but through him has become a part of our mental furniture, is briskly set forth at one of its points in a queer wood-cut. The old man in his continental coat has only gone as far as words, and the boy is just reaching out his arm for the round apple near him. If another picture had been given, the old man's coat would have been off and that boy would have been seen slithering down the trunk of the tree; and in the third fable of the Fox and the Swallow there is a phalanx-like arrangement of the tormenting flies which appeals strongly to the imagination.

The second part of a Grammatical Institute was a grammar,—"a plain and comprehensive grammar founded on the true principles and idioms of the language." Webster had fallen upon Lowth's "Short Introduction to the English Grammar," and upon the basis of that book drew up his grammar for the use of American youth. But the principal result of his work seems to have been the introduction of his own mind to the study. Six years afterward he wrote: "The favorable reception of this prompted me to extend my original plan, which led to a further investigation of the principles of language. After all my reading and observation for the course of ten years I have been able to unlearn a considerable part of what I learnt in early life, and at thirty years of age can with confidence affirm that our modern grammars have done much more hurt than good. The authors have labored to prove what is obviously absurd, namely, that our language is not made right; and in pursuance of this idea have tried to make it over again, and persuade the English to speak by Latin rules, or by arbitrary rules of their own. Hence they have rejected many phrases of pure English, and substituted those which are neither English nor sense. Writers and grammarians have attempted for centuries to introduce a subjunctive mode into English, yet without effect; the language requires none distinct from the indicative; and therefore a subjunctive form stands in books only as a singularity, and people in practice pay no regard to it. The people are right, and a critical investigation of the subject warrants me in saying that common practice, even among the unlearned, is generally defensible on the principles of analogy and the structure of the language, and that very few of the alterations recommended by Lowth and his followers can be vindicated on any better principle than some Latin rule or his own private opinion."

Accordingly, besides publishing some dissertations on the subject, he issued a new grammar in 1807, based this time on Horne Tooke's Diversions of Purley, an author with whom Webster would naturally be in sympathy. This grammar never had a firm hold of the public, and was subsequently incorporated into the prefatory matter of his great dictionary, where he says: "My researches into the structure of language had convinced me that some of Lowth's principles are erroneous and that my own grammar wanted material corrections. In consequence of this conviction, believing it to be immoral to publish what appeared to be false rules and principles, I determined to suppress my grammar, and actually did so."

Here we have his frankness of character, his honesty, his force of will, and the impulsiveness with which he took up attractive theories. Perhaps the most comprehensive