into Somerset Place. In the fine old times of
heavy salaries and light work, the houses were
appropriated to the private comfort of different
attachés of the Government; but now-a-days,
some at least of them are employed for the
must useful of public purposes.

Threading a stone passage, and ascending a
stone stair, we are ushered into a room where,
surrounded with maps and books, sits the
commander-in-chief of the operations we wish
to inspect—Major Graham, the Registrar-
General. Sealed at his desk, with his blue-
books and acts of parliament, and the forms
and returns we shall presently know more
about, he maybe regarded as the centre of
a grand piece of official mechanism, which
has ramifications all over the country so
complete, as to embrace not only large towns
and open country, but the most, secluded
villages, and the most, obscure city courts.
He has, besides his staff in Somerset Place,
the control of six hundred and twenty-
four officers, called superintendent-registrars,
each in an allotted district—generally a poor
law union. Under these superintendents
there are two thousand one hundred and
ninety registrars; thus making altogether
a perfect little army of two thousand eight
hundred and fourteen officials, charged with
the duty of keeping a correct record of the
births and deaths, and of the dissenters'
marriages. The weddings solemnised in the
old-fashioned way, in tin-parish church, or
by license by a clergyman of the establishment,
are still registered by the clergy;
and this adds to the list of the Registrar-
General's correspondents no less a number
than twelve thousand gentlemen. Adding
all together, then, we find no less than fourteen
thousand contributors to the volumes of
Somerset Place, without counting divers
persons who attend to the marriages of Jews
and Quakers. The registrars are people in
very various grades of life. Some are lawyers;
some doctors; some farmers; some shop-
keepers; some parish clerks; some school-
masters; some sextons. Their qualifications
are as various as their callings. Some write
like print; and some indulge in the frightful
scrawls which form the great misery of life to
those who have to work out their returns.
Scores of hours are lost in the London office,
and hundreds of letters are written in the
year, because registrars in the country will
persist in making no difference between u's
and n's, and between e's and i's. This, which
seems so unimportant a matter at first sight,
and which, in ordinary correspondence, really
is comparatively unimportant, becomes a
serious affair when it affects the entry of a
name in books that are to be the legal
evidence of a birth, or a marriage, or a death.
But the line flowing, fashionable writing-
master hand is equally the horror of all who
deal with such documents. The primitive
pothook-and-hanger, plain, schoolboy-looking,
writing, in which each letter has its own
distinctive though awkward character, is their
delight. The fourteen thousand

"Chiels amang us tak'ing notes"

have of course to be supplied with regular
books, and forms, and rules, and the issue;
and account-keeping of these forms, is in
itself a laborious and onerous duty. The
books are oblong folios, with limp leather
covers, which permit of rolling up, if necessary,
when the Registrar sets off from his
house to go over his district in search of
subjects for entry on the pages. The books
are three in number; and the colour of the
cover of each indicates its purpose. Births
are bound in a cheerful red; the contriver
of the marriages' book was evidently
determined to have a joke carried into every
wedding-party,—for the marriages are clad in
green; whilst the third book in its cover
indicates its serious purpose; the deaths are
black.

It seems a simple matter enough to make
an entry in an official book, all ruled ready
for the purpose, and to make that entry
at the proper time, and with the needful
formality; and yet it is found that when
thousands of different persons have this
simple duty divided amongst them, it is difficult,
almost to impossibility, to get the thing
done with accuracy. To promote the object
in view all the plans that ingenuity can
contrive are adopted. The printed forms are
abundantly supplied; inspectors are
constantly going about the country to examine
the books, give suggestions, and report on the
character and qualifications of the Registrars.
Letters are eternally issuing from Somerset
Place, pointing, out any irregularities, and
insisting upon correction; and above all this,
a "general caution" is enclosed in the pages
of each register book, recounting how certain
misdoers have met with punishment. Here
is a list of sinners gibbetted as a warning to
negligent Registrars:—

The Registrar-General wishes it to be distinctly
understood, that the commission of any one of the
irregularities specified below cannot be permitted
by him to pass with impunity. A Registrar of
births and deaths in the City of London, was
publicly dismissed, 25th April 1845, for having
parted with the custody of one of his register
books, and having made part of an entry, with the
intention of obtaining the signature of the informant
to it at a subsequent period. Another
Registrar at Askrigg, Yorkshire, was publicly
dismissed, 22nd Nov. 1845, for having inserted false
dates of registration in his register book of births.
[He had thereby rendered himself liable to be
prosecuted for felony]. A third Registrar at
Liskeard was publicly dismissed, 11th January
1847, for having omitted, for several weeks, to
inform himself of the births and deaths that had
occurred within his district, and having omitted,
without reasonable cause, to register certain deaths
respecting which he had received due notice. [He
had, by the latter irregularity, rendered himself
liable to a fine of fifty pounds on summary