was in the chair. The Duke of Newcastle, Viscountess
Galway, Lord Wodehouse, the Dean of Carlisle, Mr. E.
G. Wakefield, and many other influential supporters of
the Association, were among the company.

The Metropolitan Sanitary Association held a public
banquet on the 10th, at the Symposium of M. Soyer,
Gore House, Kensington. The Earl of Carlisle presided,
and many distinguished sanitary reformers were present.
The noble chairman gave the toast of the evening in an
able and interesting speech, in the course of which he
alluded to the considerations naturally suggested by the
contemplation of the Great Exhibition. They had (he
said) close to where they sat, that remarkable building
which was in itself a shrine of labour; but while they
gazed on the long array of its radiant offerings, or the
results of its harmonious combinations, let them not
refrain from tracing them back in thought to the crowded
workshops, to the damp cellars, and to the stifling garrets
in which so much of that collected mass of ingenuity
and splendour had been elaborated. And they should
derive, perhaps, not the least precious lesson which the
Crystal Palace could teach, if, transferring their care
from the work to the workman, they studied, as best
they could, to surround the abode of his daily health
with some portion of the decency, the comfort, and the
enjoyment with which he so plentifully enriched their
own. It was well known that the typhus fever selected
a large proportion of its victims from among adults in
the full vigour of health; andif he might borrow another
hint from the immediate accompaniment of the place in
which they were met, he would beg to remark that
nothing could be so little sanitary as bad cookery. He
was not without reverence for the invigorating qualities
of their old English fare, but he thought they would be
carrying the spirit of nationality very far if they did not
admit that, with respect to their culinary character as a
nation, they were somewhat deficient in variety and
resource. M. Soyer had already displayed an admirable
disposition to enter on a career in which he (the Earl of
Carlisle) really thought he might do substantial service,
if, besides exercising those recondite mysteries which
qualified him to take his place with a Ude and other
kindred artists, he should initiate our humbler English
people in some of the arts which would render their
cookery at once more cheap and more varied than it had
hitherto been. It had been computed by those who had
given great attention to the matter that the annual loss
arising from unnecessary sickness, from unnecessary
death, from the loss of labour, and from the cost of the
excessive number of premature funerals, amounted to
several millions in England and Wales; and he would
there observe, as they were warranted this year in
addressing all nations, that whatever our deficiencies
might be, we did not occupy the least favourable, but rather
an advanced, position in the comparative rate of mortality
upon other countries.—Mr. Charles Dickens, in proposing
"The Board of Health " defended it from the charge
made against it of being a board of "centralisation."
He thought that in the time of the cholera the public
had a pretty good opportunity of judging between this
so-called centralisation and what he might, he thought,
call "vestrylisation." He dared to say that the company
had read the reports of the Cholera Board of Health, and
he dared to say they had also read reports of certain
vestries. He had the honour of belonging to a constituency
which elected that amazing body the Marylebone
vestry; and he thought that if the company present
would look to what was done by the Board of Health at
Glasgow, and then contrast those proceedings with the
wonderful cleverness with which affairs were managed
at the same period in the parish of Marylebone, there
would be very little difficulty in judging between them.
His pet vestry even took upon itself to deny the existence
of cholera, as a weak invention of the enemy; and,
although that stout denial had, unfortunately, had no
effect in stopping the ravages of the pestilence, still it
would now serve as an example to show gentlemen what
was the meaning of "vestrylisation" as distinguished
from "centralisation." He would give them the " Board
of Health," and would couple with it the name of a
noble lord, of whose earnestness in works of benevolence
no man could doubt, and who had the courage to face
the cant which was the commonest of all, the cant about
the cant of philanthropy.—The toast was drank with
cheers, and Lord Ashley briefly responded. The Rev.
Mr. Hume, Mr. Monckton Milnes, Mr. G. Cruickshank,
and Mr. W. Rogers also addressed the meeting in the
course of the evening.

The sixty-first anniversary of the Literary Fund was
celebrated at Freemasons' Hall, on the 14th, with great
éclat. M. Van de Weyer presided, and besides many
members of our own legislature, there were present
some illustrious foreigners—as Baron Martini, and Baron
Charles Dupin. The speech of the evening was made
by Mr. Thackeray, on behalf of the English novelists.
He was anxious (he said) to make the foreigners aware
that the literary men of this country are not the "unfortunate,
degraded, and seedy people" that are pictured
for the time of George the Second; that disreputable
phantom ought now to be hissed out of society. He
did not believe that a man of talent and character is
obliged to do anything that an honest man should be
ashamed of; and, therefore, he hoped that from this
day forward the oppressed author will disappear from
amongst us. The author nowadays does not want
patrons—except such as those now around him; for
there is no longer anything degrading in his profession.
Mr. Thackeray added, that he had experienced, at one
period of his career, the advantage of temporary
assistance; and he was anxious to extend, by means of the
institution, that aid to his brethren which he found so
useful to himself.

The Lord Chancellor has expressed his determination
not to appoint any clergymen to preferments in Wales,
who are Unacquainted with the Language. The first
Welsh living which fell to the Chancellor for disposal
was that of Tir Newydd, in Anglesey; it was given to a
thorough Welsh scholar, and this was considered
evidence of Lord Truro's intention that the language
spoken by the majority of the flock should be the
language of the minister. The Bishop of Llandaff has
now followed the example of the Lord Chancellor,
having declined to institute  the Rev. Mr. Brand to the
living of Michaelstone Vedw, on the ground of that
gentleman's ignorance of the Welsh tongue.

A Madras newspaper has published a series of
statistical tables of the Health of the European and Native
Troops of that Presidency, from 1842 to 1849 inclusive,
together with returns showing the influence of
intemperance on sickness, morality, and crime, and the
comparative ratio of punishments awarded to the
teetotallers, the temperate, and the intemperate men of
the European force. These documents exhibit a decided
improvement in the general health of the men, both
European and native. The returns of the relative
state of intemperance in the former show that there
were, in 1849, 450 teetotaller, 4318 temperate, and 942
intemperate soldiers in the 15th Hussars, 25th, 51st,
84th, and 94th, foot. Of these, 589 teetotallers, 6114
temperate, and 2204 intemperate men, were admitted
into hospital; of the first five died, of the temperate
one hundred, and of the intemperate forty-two. The
return of the number of punishments awarded in 1849,
in the royal regiments, shows that 159 teetotallers, 3882
temperate, and 2498 intemperate were punished. The
number of courts-martial during the year were—on
teetotallers, none; temperate, 143; intemperate, 289.

The Board of Trade returns, for the month ending
April 5th, show an increase of exports and imports,
both compared with the preceding month and with the
same months of 1849 and 1850. The exports were
£1,599,433 beyond those of the same month in 1849,
and £1,181,444 beyond those of the same month in 1850.

The quarterly returns of Marriages, Births, and
Deaths, have been published. In the year ending
December 31st, the marriages showed an extraordinary
increase; in 1849, they were 141,599; last year they
were 152,235. The increase extended over eight out of
the eleven divisions of England and Wales; but there
was a decrease in the south, midland, and eastern
divisions. In the quarter ending March, 1851, the
births, 157,374, were more than ever had been registered
in any previous quarter. The deaths, 105,440, were
fewer by 15,000 than had been registered in the same
quarters of 1847-8, but more by 7000 than were registered
in the same quarter of 1850.