Alabama State Intelligencer

American English Dictionary. The following is an extract from a letter of Sir Herbert Croft, addressed to the Princess Royal of England, and printed in quarto in 1797. Whether his opinions may be called prophecy or conjecture, let the possessor of Webster's Dictionary judge. The passage is worthy of notice in the United States:

"The further history of the other three quarters of the world, will probably be much affected by the Americans, such being the language of England.—The natives write the language particularly well: considering they have no dictionary yet, and how insufficient. Johnson's is. Washington's speeches seldom exhibited more than a word or two liable to the least objection, and from the style of his publications, as much, or more accuracy may be expected from his successor. Adams. Perhaps we are, just now, not very far distant from the precise moment for some grand attempt with regard to fixing the standard of our language (no language can be fixed) in America. Such an attempt would I think, succeed in America, for the same reasons that would make it fail in England; whither, however, it would communicate its good effects. Deservedly immortal would be that patriot, on either side of the Atlantic, who should succeed in such an attempt."