as legitimate or actual, and if compilers are to vie with each other, who shall add most words to the list, the language must soon become utterly corrupted. What would be the state of the law if every judge should decide all questions out of his own head, and these decisions be constantly recorded whether right or wrong, and made part of the law of the land? We want our lexicographers to protect us from the corruptions, the vulgarisms, the unenglish perversions of our native tongue; to allow no word to be recorded as an exponent of the Anglo-Saxon mind, until it is fairly proved to be entitled to that honour. This is not a matter of affectation or prudery. Language has a most intimate connexion with the intellectual and moral life of a nation. It proceeds from and expresses that life, and becomes in its turn a most powerful instrument either in its improvement or degradation. If the Greek language was the product of the Greek mind, the Greek mind could never have been what it was, but for the Greek language. The destiny of a nation is determined for centuries, by the causes which determine the character of its medium of thought. The language of China acts on the minds of its teeming millions, just as the diminutive iron shoes act on the feet of the Chinese women. That people are forever condemned to a low state of mental cultivation, from the unfortunate form given to their language thousands of years ago. It is because of this intimate connexion between the inward life of a people and their language, that we regard the work of the lexicographer as so responsible, and regret that Mr. Worcester did not propose to himself the high duty of preserving the purity of our language by excluding from his dictionary every improper word. We surely need some body of men to do for English, what the French Academy does for the French tongue. A word must stand a long probation before it receives a place in the Dictionary of that Academy; and in this way thousands of corruptions, instead of being embalmed or consecrated, are allowed to perish. Though we think the work of Mr. Worcester specially unfortunate in that feature of its plan to which we have referred, we should be glad to see it supersede Webster's dictionaries, the influence of which we deprecate as in the highest degree corrupting. That lexicographer had no reverence for language. He seemed to regard it as bearing the same relation to the mind that clothes do to the body. He

therefore looked upon himself as having all the prerogatives of a tailor, authorized to clip and cut and fashion the English language at pleasure. Unaware of the vitality of the material with which he was dealing, he could not understand the feelings of those who winced under his shears, nor see any reason why a people should love their language more than they loved their coats. With various and superficial learning, he was destitude of every philosophical qualification of a lexicographer, without discrimination, taste, or judgment, and restrained by no reverence for his subject, or for the minds of the millions whose medium of thought he autocratically assumed to modify and arrange. His books, though containing much that is valuable for future labourers, ought to be looked upon not as English or even New English dictionaries, but merely as an exhibition of what for his own reasons Mr. Webster thought the English language ought to be. We therefore heartily rejoice in the appearance of Mr. Worcester's work, and hope to see it taking the place of Webster's, hoping, also, however, that our author may see reason in future editions, to exclude from his vocabulary every word, which has not the support of standard English writers. It is not enough that Mr. Wilberforce should use solemnize in the sense of making solemn, or Sir Robert Peel say a measure has "progressed," to legitimate such usage. A lexicographer ought to wait until he finds that such writers as Southey, Coleridge, Prescott, and Everett deliberately sanction a word before giving it an abiding place in the vocabulary of the language.

Gesenius' Hebrew Grammar, Fourteenth edition as revised by Dr. E. Rödiger. Translated by T. J. Conant, Professor of Hebrew in Madison University, Hamilton, N. Y. With the modifications of the editions subsequent to the eleventh, by Dr. Davies, of Stepney College, London. To which are added a course of Hebrew exercises in Hebrew Grammar, and a Hebrew Chrestomathy, prepared by the Translator. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1846. Svo.

Hebrew Grammar of Gesenius as edited by Rödiger. Translated with additions, and also a Hebrew Chrestomathy, by M. Stuart, Professor of Sacred Literature, Theological Seminary, Andover. Andover: Allen, Morrill, and Wardwell. 1846. 8vo. THE simultaneous appearance of these volumes seems to imply

a gratifying increase in the demand for Hebrew Grammars, and at the same time gives us an opportunity of recurring to a subject upon which we have not lately had occasion to say much. Apart from the works immediately before us, we can only express briefly the same views which we have in other cases stated and defended at full length. It seems to us that the peculiar merits of Gesenius are candour, diligence, and good sense. As an original discoverer of grammatical laws, he cannot claim a very high place; but he has done great service in selecting from the mass of contemporary theories and speculations, all that he found on examination to be real accessions to the previous stock of philological knowledge, and exhibiting them generally with the utmost clearness. This eclectic method made the successive editions of his grammar a faithful record of the progress of investigation and discovery in his day, though always of course a little behind the time. His friend and colleague Rödiger, who has had the charge of preparing the edition published since his death, being a younger and bolder man and belonging to a newer school of philology, naturally felt inclined to introduce more radical changes into the work than Gesenius himself would have done. It appears, however, from his preface, which neither of his translators has seen fit to give, that he was restricted in the execution of this purpose, both by want of time, and by his publisher's injunction that the form should be as little changed as possible. The natural result is that while many improvements are scattered through the work, and some parts of it entirely re-written, there are other important parts requiring equal change, which he has left almost untouched. As a single instance we may mention the elaborate confusion of Gesenius's treatment of the vowels, which we think it impossible for any beginner to comprehend. The changes which Rödiger has introduced are all, excepting what relate to the tenses, for the better, and add materially to the value of the work.

As to the two translations now before us, their history is somewhat curious. The Messrs. Appleton, having received from London a copy of Rödiger's edition, translated by Dr. Benj. Davies, determined to republish it; but when the plates were nearly completed, they were informed by Prof. Conant, that his transla tion of the eleventh edition of Gesenius had been appropriated bodily by Davies, merely altering it where changes had been

introduced by Rödiger into the original. On finding this charge to be well founded, the publishers at once proposed to bring the work out under Professor Conant's name and with such corrections as he considered necessary. His own translation was a very faithful one, its chief faults being the rigidity and other disadvantages inseparable from an exact version. The English editor performed his part in a very indifferent manner. Besides translating the new portions incorrectly, and allowing many of the minor improvements of Rödiger to pass unnoticed, he has further disfigured the work by silly notes and observations of his own, and by restoring passages and technical terms from the old editions which are directly at variance with the doctrines advocated in the new one. The book thus patched by Rödiger, mangled by Davies, and darned by Conant, presents, of course, a singular appearance. The effect of all this is made still more odd by the intervention of Professor Stuart, who after having figured for a quarter of a century as an original grammarian, now drops that character and comes upon the stage as a translator. If this self-sacrifice were really accompanied by any great advancement of the science, it would be an act of the most disinterested heroism. But as it is, we are afraid it will but seem to accredit the charges heretofore alleged against him by the jealousy and party-spirit, of which he has so frequently complained. That his own gram

mar should have been described as a recoction of Gesenius, however false, can scarcely be surprising, when we find him, by his own act, merging it in this new edition of his favourite author. His translation of the new work is directly opposite in character to that of Mr. Conant. While the latter is exact but stiff, the former is easy and slovenly. Even where he has fully understood his text, which is by no means invariably the case, his Germanized English often makes his own sense very obscure. His additions are of more pretension and more value than those of Mr. Conant; but it may well be doubted whether some of them are rightly placed in an elementary book; for instance, his long string of queries with respect to the article. In fine, we consider these two books as useful contributions to our stock of English works on Hebrew Grammar; but we think, at the same time, that their execution is defective, and that an accurate translation of Rödiger's work into good English, without alteration

or addition, would have been far superior to either. The other favourite Hebrew grammarian of Germany is Ewald, who in acuteness and invention, far surpasses Gesenius, but is just as much below him in the indispensable quality of common sense. It is no small proof of his love and power of condensation that his Grammar has been thrice re-written, since its first appearance, and that in every case its bulk has been diminished, until now it is reduced to the form of a very thin octavo. These works, though abounding in ingenious and refined suggestions, are so full of strained hypotheses and freaks of fancy, as to render them unfit for elementary instruction. Nordheimer, coming after both these great grammarians, and being able from his independent position to avail himself of their researches, succeeded in combining their most valuable qualities with the fruits of his own original investigations, giving to his work the clear systematic method of Gesenius, and infusing into it the animating philosophical spirit of Ewald. We are far from meaning to describe Nordheimer's grammar as superior in all respects to those of his predecessors. On the contrary, we think that there are not a few points in which the treatment of Gesenius or Ewald is decidedly better. This applies chiefly to the first volume, the Orthography and Etymology, to elucidate which so much has been done of late years by Hupfeld and others. The second volume, which contains the syntax, although not without its faults, is in our opinion greatly superior to every other. Nordheimer's Grammar has another advantage as respects its use in England and America. It is not a translation, but was originally written both in German and in English. A still greater advantage is that one of its authors still survives and is devoted to the. same objects of pursuit. In view of this fact, we have no hesitation in expressing our opinion, that the great desideratum in our Hebrew apparatus at the present moment, is a new edition of this admirable grammar in a more convenient form and with the many improvements which have no doubt been suggested by the subsequent experience of its authors. There is much to be said in favour of the doctrine, that the student should make use from the beginning of a copious grammar, containing a full elucidation of all the phenomena of the language, to be mastered by degrees. But on the other hand, every teacher of experience must know that too long a grammar embarrasses and disheartens