e world has not known, an _Earthly_ paradise
for humanity.--It is but three quarters of a century,
remember, since we were nationally born: give as the
fourteen hundred years that have nursed and cultivated
this Island, and where is the limit of our perfection
and strength? On either side of that Mississippi
back-bone of ours to the Oceans, and as far north and
south as freedom and knowledge can pierce, America
must be a garden and a goal, filled with every
excellence and beauty, beyond which there can be no
advance. We shall not live to see it, but it will
come, only let us pull careful and steady. We have
been Dickens'd and Trollop'd, and it should do us
good. Nothing but the grandeur that lies germinating
in our heart provokes this idle spleen from our
neighbors, and the moment we cool down and think and
curb ourselves the rest is secure."

=New Glass Factory.=

Erastus Corning & Co. are about establishing a factory near the ferry
at Troy, for the manufacture of all kinds of glass ware. The work is
fast progressing, and in about four weeks they will commence blowing.
It will afford employment to a large number of men, and will, no
doubt, meet with that success which it certainly merits.

=Result of Observation.=

The editor of the New Haven Herald sets it down as a fact in natural
history, proved by his experience for years, that when a traveller
rides up to a toll gate, the keeper--if a man, invariably brings out a
box, or a handful of change; but if a woman, she comes out and takes
the traveller's coin, and then goes back for the change.

* * * * *

Snags and other obstructions in the Western rivers, are now
denominated _Polk stalks_.

=The Science of Astronomy.=

DESCRIPTIVE ASTRONOMY.

Mercury, the nearest planet to the sun, is a globe of about 3140 miles
in diameter, rotating on its axis in 24 hours and 5 1-2 minutes, and
revolving round the central luminary, at a distance of 37,000,000 of
miles, in 88 days.--From the earth it can only be seen occasionally in
the morning or evening, as it never rises before, or sets after the
sun, at a greater distance of the time than 1 hour and 50 minutes. It
appears to the naked eye as a small and brilliant star, but when
observed through a telescope, is horned like the moon, because we only
see a part of the surface which the sun is illuminating