His mind and energies to study bent? Con Wayland's "ego" and "non ego," here, here The rising youth go forth from year to year, passed, years have Whose living light eclipses every other, So grandly did that mother-thought alone These youths may make themselves renowned at We bless her liberal hand. It were but meet last, And by their genius and their moral worth, And these fair halls become as classic ground, The children of her bounty here to-day Let us, as passing through the walks of life, Furnished with instruments both great and small, When hope was young, life garlanded with flow A bona fide telescope and all. Come, let us paint the future, when these walls When noble libraries shall open here ers; And as each year, spun by the hand of fate, Our cherished dreams, like mist-wreaths, melt away, Still may these hours their pleasing spell retain For, though "hard times" stole many a social And bathe us in the sunlight of the past. blessing, He left behind our yankee knack for guessing. 'Tis ever thus, upon our onward track, When memory brings her pictured scenes to view, Lurking among us in obscurity; Still fondly linger by those dusky lines To youthful eyes, life's river in its course Of that hereafter, when our dreams shall be How many a different scene of weal or woe Lies in the praises of a multitude. Alas! for him; when fancy's dreamings high And in its horizon the day-star breaks, And they may win; but ere they reach the goal Though strife and cursing fill the lower air, How many a lofty principle of soul, Beneath the car of policy shall lie A sacrifice to popularity. Sending back echoings of praise and prayer, Their fame's a bubble; fortune's wheel may turn, Strewing our path with ministries of good; They say "Eureka" at an empty urn; Or smooth the furrows from a brow of care. Loving all men as one great Brotherhood, Can stifle down the true, free heart below?! In my youth's gay sunny morning, Built I many an airy castle Where my soul should dwell for aye. Towers of stone, and doors of iron, "Drink," I said, "oh! Soul, be merry, Eat, to-day may be thy last; Seize the present time and pleasure, "Not for thankless freedom's mission Shall my Soul her ease resign, So I turned me to my revel, Bade the harpers sing once more, But my soul was heavy. Conscience Wisdom calls; my fabrics vanish, In my life-book, stained and blotted, I have turned another page, Armed me for life's hot battle, Eager in its conflict to engage, Trusting in the glorious promise Of a heavenly heritage. Schoolmates, shall our soul's fair gardens Once, 'tis said, the poet Amphion, So our lives should flow harmonious So should we a power inherit Which should raise and make us strong, And build up, within the spirit, Bulwarks against sin and wrong. Labor is this mighty lever Which should raise and make us free; Are your hands too white for soiling? Of the common herd afraid? Human pride! it leaves its traces, But for me, let not the dollar, And the stamp of noble birth He whose hand, embrowned by labor, Rise and work! Will idle dreaming Onward press! the weeds of pleasure Courage in the weak beginning For the Schoolmaster. English Dictionaries. BY PROF. E. O. HAVEN. IN each of the modern languages in which literature and science have been extensively cultivated, as well as in each of the ancient languages, the knowledge of which is conceived to be valuable, may be, found at least one dictionary that could not have been entirely the work of one man. The best dictionaries are the product of successive generations of laborious scholars. Passow alone could not have produced his valuable Latin Dictionary, which has been still more improved by Andrews. Gesenius was greatly indebted to previous and contemporary commentators in the production of his Hebrew Lexicon. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the persevering and systematic labors of Noah Webster, all tending towards one end, and protracted through far more than the average working life of man, would have produced a dictionary having any claims to be a perfect lexicon of the English language, had he not had the labors of some predecessors for a foundation, and had not the work in some A MAN, to be truly eloquent, must first possess some well-defined thought which he believes, feels, and with which he is so burden-particular departments been completed by ed that he cannot keep it. Then, if his soul men specially skilled in those departments. is on fire, there is no fear, provided he discards all affectation or artifice, that he will light up a flame in the minds of his audience, of sparkling, living thoughts, which shall continue to burn forever. In early times there were no dictionaries. Men spoke and wrote according to usage, which was never uniform over the whole of any considerable nation or in any two successive generations. Hence the great difficulty in determining the proper meaning and orthography, particularly of words found only or principally in ancient works. It would be difficult to find two manuscripts in Latin, Greek, or Anglo-Saxon, or in any ancient language, in both of which a uniform mode of orthography throughout was used. In these ancient languages scholars have come to an agreement, and if now a new manuscript is found, though sometimes a few copies are - feeble folk To printed in the original spelling that various linguist - could reduce to a system so cɔmscholars may have the pleasure and profit of plex a language as the English. Various deciphering it, yet the editions designed for spellings continued to appear · but in a far general use are reduced to the standard mode less ratio - words were used in new meanof spelling and punctuation. This was the ings, new words were introduced, and a new case, for instance, with a work called Hip-dictionary was needed. Hosts of imitators polytus, a manuscript of which lay unnoticed - of course sprung up. They in the library of the University of Paris many are scarcely worthy of mention. All of them years, till some copies seriatim and literatim introduced some improvements, but many of were made, and soon after an edition accord- them marred more than they improved. Not ing to the modern spelling was made by Bun- one of them, like Johnson, devoted to the sen, a celebrated German scholar. work heroically years of investigation. these, however, John Walker was an exception. Though destitute of the boldness and scope of mind of Johnson, he did improve the orthography of the language. He saw that Johnson had perpetuated absurdities, and set himself to remove many of them. He rectified the spelling of some words, and introduced some others. His chief excellency, however, was in exhibiting the true pronunciation of words according to the practice of the best society in London. For this he was especially qualified, as he was for many years a teacher of elocution in the best society. To him in this particular department, all subsequent lexicographers are much indebted. The same will apply to books published even after the art of printing had come into general use. Previous to the latter part of the eighteenth century, there was no fixed or indeed general standard of orthography in the English language. Many books even had the same words spelled in two or three, and sometimes in many different ways. Even in so short a production as the Will of Shakspeare, his name is written in two different spellings, and it is probable that a printer then would have followed the copy. In 1775, Johnson's large dictionary was published. He had toiled I think more than ten years in its production. He limited his investigations, however, to works which had appeared within two hundred years of his own time, not studying the Anglo-Saxon, and of course in that day, having an imperfect knowledge of Latin, and still more so of Greek. But the greatest lexicogropher in our language was unquestionably our countryman, the celebrated Noah Webster. His labors in this department, and the results of them, far surpass those of any other man before or The great credit of this work was the in- since. From the beginning, he seems to have troduction of some system imperfect as it had a strong predilection for the critical study necessarily was - into the perfect medley of of words. At the age of twenty-five, five orthography which had previously prevailed, years after his graduation at Yale College, he and also a very creditable explanation of the in the meantime having studied law, he pubmeaning of words deduced from their ordina-lished that elementary compend called Webry usage, in the one hundred and fifty years ster's Spelling Book, of which more than thir. over which his studies ranged. ty millions are said to have been printed, and from which probably more than three times as many people have learned to read as there But it would betray an inadequate conception of the magnitude of the enterprise, to suppose that one man - and he not a profound are now adults in the United States, and far |