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. Mountains of great height have been observed on the surface of this planet, particularly in its lower or southern hemisphere. One has been calculated at 10 3-4 miles in height, being about eight times higher, in proportion to the bulk of the planet, than the loftiest mountains upon earth. The matter of Mercury is of much greater density than that of the earth, equalling lead in weight; so that a human being placed upon its surface would be so strongly drawn towards the ground as scarcely to be able to crawl.