In other branches of education the same state of things is seen to exist.  Of the Boston Academy’s collection of sacred music the sale has exceeded 600,000; and the aggregate sale of five books by the same author has probably exceeded a million, at a dollar per volume.  Leaving the common schools we come to the high schools and colleges, of which latter the names of no less than 120 are given in the American Almanac.  Here again we have decentralization, and its effect is to bring within reach of almost the whole people a higher degree of education than could be afforded by the common schools.  The problem to be solved is, as stated by a recent and most enlightened traveller, “How are citizens to be made thinking beings in the greatest numbers?” Its solution is found in making of the educational fabric a great pyramid, of which the common schools form the base and the Smithsonian Institute the apex, the intermediate places being filled with high schools, lyceums, and colleges of various descriptions, fitted to the powers and the means of those who need instruction.  All these make, of course, demand for books, and hence it is that the sale of Anthon’s series of classics (averaging $1) amounts, as I am told, to certainly not less than 50,000 volumes per annum, while of the “Classical Dictionary” of the same author ($4) not less than thirty thousand have been sold.  Of Liddell and Scott’s “Greek Lexicon” ($5), edited by Prof.  Drisler, the sale has been not less than 25,000, and probably much larger.  Of Webster’s 4to.  “Dictionary” ($6) it has been, I am assured, 60,000, and perhaps even 80,000; and of the royal 8vo. one ($3.50), 250,000.  Of Bolmar’s French school books not less than 150,00 volumes have been sold.  The number of books used in the higher schools—­text-books in philosophy, chemistry, and other branches of science—­is exceedingly great, and it would be easy to produce numbers of which the sale is from five to ten thousand per annum; but to do so would occupy too much space, and I must content myself with the few facts already given in regard to this department of literature.

Decentralization, or local self-government, tends thus to place the whole people in a condition to read newspapers, while the same cause tends to produce those local interests which give interest to the public journals, and induce men to purchase them.  Hence it is that their number is so large.  The census of 1850 gives it at 2,625; and the increase since that time has been very great.  The total number of papers printed can scarcely be under 600,000,000, which would give almost 24 for every person, old and young, black and white, male and female, in the Union.  But recently the newspaper press of the United Kingdom was said to require about 160,000 reams of paper, which would give about 75,000,000 of papers, or two and a half per head.