class " schools may adopt this dictionary with great advantage.
It is a work for which we have been long looking, and for which we can per- ceive the greatest use. Every teacher of Latin who studies at all the wants of his pupils knows how great the "dictionary " difficulty is. A boy of ten turned loose, so to speak, into one even of the " abridged " dictionaries in common use, is fairly lost. After he has, with no small difficulty, found his word, he is utterly bewildered by the information which is supplied to him. First, very likely, he sees (in brackets which
of course he does not understand) certain obsolete forms, such as Plan- tine perfects, e.g., as tetuli, which, if he be of an industrious turn, he diligently fixes in his memory. Then he encounters a whole cohort of meanings. Despairing of making a right choice, he probably fixes on the first that presents itself, which, being the literal meaning, is, in all probability, not the one which he wants. The attempt to solve the difficulty by vocabu- laries cannot be called satisfactory. There is an enormous waste of space, and consequently of cost. To furnish every book with a vocabulary is to ensure a vast amount of repetition. Dr. White's "Grammar-School Texts" are supplied with vocabularies which are models of their kind, but they occupy, taking the whole series together, an amount of space, and make consequently an addition to the cost, quite out of proportion to the amount of the text. The volume before us —published, we may mention, at the moderate price of three shillings (it contains three hundred pages)—teachers of Latin will find exactly what they want for lower forms, for all, sve may say, but the head form, and that which stands next to it. All words not occurring in the easier authors, all references to authors, and all non-Latin etymologies have been omitted. In fact, the book is a good and well-arranged general vocabulary. Of course, by using it, more is left to the teacher to supply. But, if he is as well qualified as he ought to be, he will supply it without difficulty, and will, moreover, supply exactly what is wanted, and not, as do the dictionaries, a vast amount of matter unnecessary, and therefore embarrassing. We hope that the title which it has been thought proper to give to the book will not prejudice any against it. It is quite as good for first-class as for middle- class schools, though, of, course, in the latter it may be used throughout all the classes.
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