The numbers, it must be observed, represent the deaths only; we have no means of knowing the number who suffer from many of the assigned causes, and either eventually recover, or fall victims to diseases which find names in the Registrar-General's reports. It is fearful to observe, that "suffocation" forms a regular item in the weekly reports. During the week ended January 22, 1861, the infant mortality in London, from this cause alone, was twelve. The deaths were, probably, all occasioned by overlaying in bed; the anterior cause of the catastrophe being it is feared, too frequently, drunkenness.

As regards the preservation of infant life, the chances-setting apart those who perish from want of natural nutriment—are more in favour of the easy classes than of the poor. With the former there is more care, and comparatively less ignorance, and the children are not so liable to accident; neither are they likely to suffer from the privations to which the children of the poor are exposed. They have more of the great necessaries of life-pure water, pure air, light, and food; in general by far too little, in all cases, of the first three requisites; often too much of the last. The want of all these necessaries among the poor is so patent, that medical men have little difficulty in ascribing the origin of the diseases which carry off the children of the poor to their true sources-bad drainage, bad ventilation, bad water, insufficiency of light, and improper or insufficient food. Among the poor one frequent cause of infant mortality is inflammation of the lungs. When this disease sets in, under the circumstances above mentioned, death is almost certain; whereas, in the model lodging-houses, where more favourable conditions exist, the disease is found to go through its regular course, and the child recovers. I was informed by a medical gentleman that in one street, inhabited chiefly by a population engaged in the fisheries, during twelve months he attended ten fatal cases of inflammation of the lungs among children.

I have thus endeavoured to show the necessity of sanitary knowledge, especially to women. I have also shown how circumstances and habits, apparently remote, may have an influence, for good or for evil, upon the health of successive generations, and have pointed out some of the causes which may have induced the ill-health so generally ascribed to English women. I would now earnestly impress upon the women of England the urgent necessity of themselves taking measures to restore their own health, and to bring up healthy children; bearing ever in mind the sage maxim, that prevention is better than cure. Let them earnestly seek and obtain that knowledge of the laws of life and health which shall enable them to discharge conscientiously the sacred duty they owe to their families. I am aware that a prejudice existed formerly-I hope it exists no longeragainst women acquiring such knowledge. It was considered not only unnecessary, but improper. It might have been added, that there was a want of works calculated to convey to women the information they required without being mixed up with the description and treatment of

:

diseases and unnecessary technicalities. Now, however, this want has been fully supplied many excellent and cheap works on physiology and the vital functions have been issued, and there is no longer any excuse for ignorance on these important subjects. The question of the impropriety of such studies by women has long been disposed of. Years ago Dr. Southwood Smith had said "I look upon that notion of delicacy which would exclude women from knowledge calculated in an extraordinary degree to open, exalt, and purify their minds, and to fit them for the performance of their duties, as alike degrading to those to whom it affects to show respect, and debasing to the mind that entertains it."

The really

The timid, and perhaps the indolent also, shrink from these studies, fearing to incur the charge of being "strong-minded women." Strange if what ought to be a recommendation, should be a term of reproach! That is truly a weak, not a strong-minded woman, who, casting off the reserve of her sex, affects the dress and manners of men. strong-minded woman, knowing her own place in society, and conscious of her responsibilities, will never fall into such errors. consists in daring to do all that doth become a woman. This is the woman whose own works shall praise her; whose children shall rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her!

Her strength

"Without a friend to love or pity,

All alone in this crowded city

Where is the use of living?"

Trill-trill-trill!

The song of a lark

Scattered the visions dreary and dark,
And woke my heart with a thrill!
Poor little lark, in its tiny prison

It chanted its sweet song over and over,

As if it were only newly risen

From the fields of emerald wheat and clover;
And the notes came pouring,
Heavenward soaring-

Up-up-up;

As if the cup

Of its happiness were overflowing,

Out on the hills, with a fresh breeze blowing,
And the sky to eastward redly glowing,
In the bright green country far away,
At the morn of a sunny summer day.

Sorrow vanished-gloom was banished—
Forgotten the dreary misty weather;

And long leagues off, where the corn was green,

Up in the sunlight's golden sheen,

My heart and the lark were mounting together, High-high-high

In the bright blue sky!

Trill-trill-trill!

And cheerily still

The lark, in the midst of the busy city,

Over and over sang its ditty;

Raising my soul like a holy beatitude:

So, with all gratitude,

Cheered and chastened,
Onward I hastened,

Blessing the bird for its merry song,

That haunted my heart the whole day long.

AN EXCURSUS FOR PRACTICAL PEOPLE.

It has been remarked to me, by a young man on the look-out for a wife, that the young ladies of the present day are too much alike, totally deficient in that variety which charms the eye in frippery and fancy-goods; and that, if he were to dash into society blindfold and choose a cara sposa at hap-hazard, the result would probably be as satisfactory as he is likely to find it with his eyes wide open. But the young ladies may congratulate themselves that they are not alone in this lamentable resemblance to each other; for the remark of my friend is capable of much wider application than that which is palpable on the surface. English society generally is, nowadays, sadly deficient in variety. The bugbear it bows the knee to worship is one of Uniformity; and almost every moral, religious, or literary innovation which conforms not to the dicta of this bugbear, may be regarded by far-seeing men and women as a voluntary or involuntary protest against cant. There are certain stiff laws and codes which even the iconoclast transgresses at his peril; and the eccentric man, being an object of social distrust and odium, has a hard up-hill fight before he can gain for himself a comfortable position in the world. The world sends out patterns by which we are to cut cloth for individual wearing-the coats must be all alike, of the same shape and calibre. And this state of things is well and good, if not pursued to too great an extent. There is a medium in all things, saith the tritest of truisms-which may mean, in the present instance, that too many of us, instead of living like moderate men and true, sacrifice wholesome idiosyncrasy in order to appear respectable. The respectable people have promulgated an abstract bull for tea-table observance, and they have called it Realism.

There is realism, and there is a cant of realism: the latter is, possibly, a morbid yellow disease beginning with the love of moneymaking. In morals, in art, and in literature, there is no more patent and healthy thing than realism, properly so called. Even the less judicious exponents of the doctrine (though their exposition has served its purpose, and should die out) did good service when they asserted it, in opposition to the selfabsorbed and impersonal cant of the last generation. But the cant of realism is paraded as an excuse for pettifogging. It is the property of the small critic wielding his delicate pen; of young Miss Pert with "a voice as small as hath a goat;" and of the business man who seeks an excuse for being soulless, unsympathetic, and meanspirited. Even the ponderous quarterlies catch the epidemic occasionally. Some authors find in it an excuse for their false fun and their buffoonery, which scoff at noble sentiments.

This cant of realism is not only stale and unprofitable, but petty and degraded; for it directly repudiates the moderate idealism which gives colour to life, manners, and literature, and significance to bare events. We pride ourselves too much on being practical, prosy, and matter-of-fact

-three excellent adjectives when not bandied about by the boasters; and we sneer too often at those higher aspirations which spiritualize experience and sanctify labour as a religion. In talking platitudes about truth, one is apt to forget that the poetical part of man is as much a portion of truth as are arms, legs, eyes, or hair. Money is good in its way, and so are moneymakers; but the former dwindles down to insignificance when compared with the emotions it cannot awaken; and the latter are not only very small mites in God's universe, but lilliputian portions of the world of man. Still, on a tacit understanding between himself and the modern public, the critic has coined for himself the trite verbiage of "maudlin sentimentality," with which he seeks to laugh to scorn our spiritual sympathy with beautiful things, and not, as might be reasonably supposed, to annihilate the false vendors of bathos. But has it ever occurred to practical people that we carry our dislike of idealism too far, and that we might do better than "stand shivering on the brink of beauty," for fear of committing ourselves irrevocably?

There is no reason why we should be ashamed of our emotions and our aspirations, when they are wholesome and honest ones; and we may congratulate ourselves that they do really linger, in some form or other, in our literature, and in our manners. Yet nothing is more plain than that we seek to disguise them, to deny their existence, and to underrate their value. We delight in our pluck, our energy, our feats of strength, so to speak; we stand before each other like good-natured gladiators, ambitious to show our muscles. We boast hugely of the young bloods of England, who camp on the far prairie, go down the Mississippi on log-rafts, and smoke their cigars under the very nose of the Llama of Thibet. In fact, we have a disproportionate admiration for the hardy virtues—are prone to confound muscle with manliness, physical with moral courage, animal with intellectual strength. Now, the value of these hardy virtues, which is undeniably great, may be misunderstood. John Bull is superior, not only to his sheep, but to his prize oxen; and there ought to be something deeper in him than flesh and fisticuffs. He takes good care, however, to disguise this higher humanity. He blushes to be caught indulging in sentiment and feeling; he leaves such things to women and children, he says. He composes himself, with his hands in his pockets, by a deathbed. The youthful element of love accepts in him a too gross and mean interpretation. He bullies and disguises his holier affections. The worst of the matter is that, from first putting on this unfeeling crust as a manly shield, he has at last persuaded himself that he is impervious to emotional and ideal impressions, and that the more earthly his ethics are the better for his reputation as a solid thoroughgoing tradesman, traveller, and colonist.

Ashamed of our emotions, yet secretly tired of our discounting and dividend-hunting, we covertly fly elsewhere for relief and relaxation. We induce the false form of the very quality we condemn. We make a compromise with conscience, and resort to a philosophy which views the