firmity, and that the less death we have the more
sickness we have,—and shall have, until sanitary
science shall have advanced several steps
higher. "Facts," he says, "are accumulating
to prove that the mere number of deaths
occurring in any locality, bear no constant
or even approximate ratio to the real amount
of sickness existing there. As a necessary
result of improvements in domestic management
and medical treatment, and owing to
the removal or absence of those more virulent
agents of destruction which, by sharp and decisive
strokes, prematurely sever the thread of
life, its duration has been lengthened in our
great cities; but at the same time the sickly
and infirm period of existence has been prolonged
probably in a greater degree than even
life itself. Chronic diseases, or at least functional
disorders, have increased. Vital force is
lowered. Man's work is arrested; his duties
are unperformed; his objects fail; though he
still lives. Weakly, diseased children are now
mercifully helped, as they never were in olden
time, to grow up into weakly, ailing adults,
who, in their turn, propagate with abnormal
fecundity an unsound progeny. Is this true
sanitary progress? Does it deserve the ostentatious
parading an increasing death-rate?"

As our fathers left us no more statistics of
sickness than are at present registering for the
instruction of our children, we are unable to say
nay to this picture. It is probable that under the
old unwholesome conditions of life there was not
only a great deal of killing, but also a great deal
of crippling short of death, and even more general
sickness, as well as more death, than there is
among us now. But of that we know nothing.
It is most true that we have never studied, and
are still neglecting to study, with any accuracy,
the statistics of sickness and health, to which
the statistics of death, even if they were perfect,
would afford no clue. So far as care of the
body goes, it concerns a man more to know his
risks of the fifty illnesses that may throw him
on his back, than the possible date of the one
death that must come, and of which the time is
to him personally—in spite of libraries full of
statistics—utterly unknown and uncertain. We
join, therefore, in the demand for a registration
of sickness that has not a fatal end, as well a
for a more effective registration even of the
births and of the causes of the deaths themselves.
Let us have lists of the killed, and of
the wounded too.

REJOICE!

IN the warm grandeur of the summer-glows,
     Gleaming and cold in Winter's frozen tears,
Casting a faded crimson on the snows,
          Beauty in all appears—
The thunder-music of the winter floods,
The summer calms, the hush of solitudes.

This crowning beauty breathes upon the face,
     Up through the fine pores of the scented flowers,
In the still stars her looks of love we trace
          On quiet midnight hours;
Her dew-wet kisses to the morn are given;
Her lingering blushes tinge the cheek of even.

Beauty will oft her face in darkness shroud,
     Yet lovely glances struggle through the storm:
'Tis the black bosom of the rainy cloud
          Wears the bright rainbow's form.
A universal love, a good in ill
Worketh for man, yet cheats his human skill.

Closed in the city's cold and granite heart,
     Lulled by the groaning murmur of the wheels,
The soul is lost in life, becomes a part
          Of the fierce tide that steals
Throughout the city's long and sinuous veins,
The many-sounded streets, the lighted lanes:

Yet may the heart be far 'mong flowery fells,
     Drinking the drowsy music of the bee,
Or dreaming joyous in the summer dells
          Wrapt in rich poesy.
The spirit ne'er is chained by time or place,
Wild as the swallow in its airy chase.

Rejoice, O man! the winds sing out " Rejoice!"
     Hark! it is whispered by the falling leaf,
A grand hope-echo like a seraph voice
          Rings through the night of grief.
O God! how barren were thy gift of life
Devoid of flowers, with nought but weeds of strife!

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXVI.

HAD Fortune decreed that I should be rich, I
believe I would have been the most popular of
men. There is such a natural kindness of
disposition in me, blended with the most refined sense
of discrimination. I love humanity in the
aggregate, and, at the same time, with a rare
delicacy of sentiment, I can follow through all
the tortuous windings of the heart, and
actually sympathise in emotions that I never
experienced. No rank is too exalted, no lot too
humble, for the exercise of my benevolence. I
have sat in my arm-chair with a beating, throbbing
heart, as I imagined the troubles of a king,
and I have drunk my Bordeaux with tears of
gratitude as I fancied myself a peasant with only
water to slake his thirst. To a man of highly
organised temperament, the privations themselves
are not necessary to eliminate the feelings they
would suggest. Coarser natures would require
starvation to produce the sense of hunger,
nakedness to cause that of cold, and so on; the
gifted can be in rags, while enclosed in a wadded
dressing-gown; they can go supperless to bed
after a meal of oysters and toasted cheese; they
can, if they will, be fatally wounded as they sit
over their wine, or cast away after shipwreck
with their feet on the fender. Great privileges
all these; happy is he who has them, happy are
they amidst whom he tries to spread the blessings
of his inheritance!

Amid the many admirable traits which I recognise
in myself—and of which I speak not
boastfully, but gratefully, being accidents of my
nature as far removed from my own agency as
the colour of my eyes or the shape of my nose—
of these, I say, I know of none more striking
than such as fit me to be a patron. I am graecful
as a lover, touching as a friend, but I am
really great as a protector.

Revelling in such sentiments as these, I stood