mechanical genius, he invented a planetarium, which may justly be regarded as one of the mechanical wonders of the world. Pursuing his researches, he became one of the first practical astronomers of his time, and he succeeded the venerable Franklin as President of the American Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia. ROGER SHERMAN, until the age of twenty-three, occupied a shoemaker's bench. To him it would have been injurious to apply the adage, '_Ne sutor ultra crepidam_.' To the acquirements of a good common school education, he added, to a respectable extent, the higher attainments of legal and political science; and no man brought into the councils of this country, at the trying period of the revolution, a sounder head, or a more patriotic heart. To these distinguished examples, hundreds of others might be added, who, if they have not fully equalled those that have been mentioned, in fame, have perhaps not fallen behind them in respectability and usefulness. And what has been true in this respect, in time past, is true at present, and is likely to be equally true in time to come. No man now fills a greater space in the national councils, than the son of a plain farmer in New-Hampshire, who commenced his brilliant career on the benches of a common school, in his native town. And no man can tell what future farmers' or mechanics' sons may occupy the highest and most responsible posts of the nation. In the free government of the United States, every man is, to a great extent, the artificer of his own fortune and fame. Common schools are the means by which native genius is to be, in the first instance, taught to put forth its strength, and by which it is to be raised from its obscurity. The people of the United States are, to a good degree, awake to the importance of affording legislative aid to the common and higher schools of the country; and in every state in the Union, public funds are, to a greater or less extent, devoted to this object. The new states seem likely, in this respect, to equal, if not to surpass, the old. The funds which they have appropriated to this purpose, have been chiefly new lands, which are constantly rising in value, and which, in many instances, promise, in a future day, to swell to a very respectable amount.