JOHN POUNDS was another benefactor to society who deserves to be held in perpetual remembrance. He was born at Portsmouth in the year 1766. By the fracture of a limb, he was forced to change his employment as a shipwright for that of a shoemaker, or rather shoe-mender, for he never rose to the rank of a maker, and as the occupant of a "weather-boarded tenement" in his native town, John divided his time between his awls and deeds of active benevolence. A cripple himself by his accident, he had also the charge of a decrepit nephew; and the boy for some time divided the attention of Pounds with a number of tame birds which he kept from affection or for amusement. By exercising his ingenuity and benevolence at once, he succeeded in restoring some degree of soundness to his nephew: he then undertook to teach him to read; and that led him to seek some companion for his ward and pupil, under the wise impression that the one would stimulate the other, and the progress of both be promoted. His pupils gradually increased in number: his love of teaching grew upon him, and the work soon knew no limits but those of John's very humble abode. It was about six feet wide by eighteen in length; and in that apartment did Pounds, surrounded by his scholars, ply his double avocation of cobler and schoolmaster. The progress of the scholars was as diverse as the employments of the master; but he bore all with gladness. He had his eye upon each outcast in the group, and by his expertness he showed that he was a born teacher--his gift lay in training. A LOWLY PHILANTHROPIST. As Pounds rose in popularity, the applications for admission to his seminary increased; and with a remarkable but wise instinct, he selected "the little blackguards" in preference to others, that he might enjoy the pleasure of breaking them in like the wild ass's colt. Some he would allure to his school by such poor bribes as he could command; and though his labours were unrequited, though he had not the means of purchasing school-books, but taught the alphabet from handbills and fragments of old volumes, yet some hundreds of persons owed all the learning they ever acquired to this facetious, devoted, and humble philanthropist. He helped to keep down the calendar of crime, and sent not a few into life possessed of acquirements sufficient to impart respectability in their sphere, who, had it not been for John Pounds, the founder of Ragged Schools, might have become the pests or the plunderers of society. MAN'S RUIN AND RISE.