SUGGESTIONS FOR CHEAP BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Although your space is generally devoted to the higher and more curious
inquiries respecting antiquities and literature, I am sure you will not
grudge a little room for facilitating and improving the means of popular
information and instruction.

For every man, almost in any station in society, I submit that the
followings works for reference are indispensable, in the most convenient
corner or shelf of his library:--1. A Biographical Dictionary. 2. A
Gazetteer. 3. A Statistical or Commercial Dictionary. With works of that
description the public have been very indifferently supplied during the
last thirty years: at least, at the _moderate prices_ calculated to
bring them within the reach of students in humbler life, forming the
great mass of readers. Mr. Constable, of Edinburgh, published in 1817 an
abridged Gazetteer, price 18s., but there has been no such work since.
Mr. A.K. Johnston's _Geographical Dictionary_, at 36s., lately
published, supplies to a certain class of readers one of the works
wanted.

I beg to suggest a few observations for the improvement of works of this
description through your valuable channel.

I. I submit that none of the dictionaries of reference now specified
should be published without promise of a _periodical supplement_ every
five or seven years, containing later matter and intelligence. For
example, how easily could this be given in the case of a Biographical
Dictionary! Say that such a work has been published in 1830 (which, it
is believed, is the date of Gorton's excellent _Biographical
Dictionary_), the compiler of a supplement has only to collect and