'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 unde