a character like this ought to attend, but very
rarely do attend, deductions drawn from facts
merely numerical. Every fact in numbers has
its value as an element in truth, but there is
scarcely one table in ten which contains much
more than one step in ten towards the fact at
which it helps one to arrive. Statistics are
a finger-post to truth, but, sitting on the
finger-post which points to it, is not the way
to reach our destination.

The facts which we shall draw from M.
Mallet's calculations will be only such as are
of the simplest character: comparison in the
same town of one time with another, not year
by year, but half-century with half-century,
plain countings of heads on sundry matters
— from all which we shall avoid inferring
anything that is not obvious and simple. For
example: in the year 1700 there were about
seventeen thousand people dwelling in Geneva;
in 1834 there were twenty-seven thousand;
so we may safely conclude that the population
has increased. Going upon this very safe
kind of ground, let us look now, first, for a
few facts concerning marriages.

The majority of marriages of course are
those which take place between bachelors
and spinsters. Out of a hundred pairs who
knot themselves together, eighty-one or eighty-
two are bachelor and spinster; about four are
bachelors who marry widows, so that caution
is extremely prevalent; only two pairs are
widowers and widows, but twelve or thirteen
widowers take to themselves a second spinster.
In fact, research proves that in Geneva, and
perhaps everywhere, either Uncle Toby is
right in his opinion of widows— but his caution
to the world is needless, their allurements
are avoided— or that gentleman had been
misled by the exceptional nature of his own
experience. Out of the whole number of
marriages, the second marriages of men were
one in seven, the second marriages of women
only one in seventeen. With a ludicrous
determination to be scientific, over which not
a few learned men keep him in countenance,
M. Mallet searches his Greek lexicon, and
calls the desire to marry again, from Greek
words signifying ”again” and ”marry,” the
Palingamic Force! The Palingamic Force,
therefore, is weak in widows, strong in
widowers; unless the Gamic force— the
impulse to get married— spends itself on spinsters,
and the widows' hands remain free through
the paucity of applicants.

In contrast to the Palingamic, we must put
a Misogamic force. When Geneva was
subject to the laws of France, divorces were
easily obtained, and that common consequence
of marriage known to wives and husbands as
repentance, was carried to the extreme point
of divorce, as often as once in every seven or
eight marriages. But since divorces have
been made less easy, only one couple in forty-
eight have had the good fortune to obtain one.
The average period during which pairs
remained together before they divorced was
twelve years. One couple, as an extreme
case, separated in three years, and another
couple parted after they had lived thirty-two
years together.

The average age at which they marry in
Geneva is, for men, twenty-nine; for women,
twenty-seven: in such marriages the chances
are as eleven to nineteen in favour of the
wife's surviving. The consequent numerical
preponderance of widows over widowers,
renders still more remarkable their want of
Palingamic Force. The average age of
marriage being, however, as we have said, it
is still a fact that in Geneva thirty spinsters
in a hundred marry husbands younger than
themselves. This is attributed to the thrifty
habit which retains women in domestic
service unmarried, until they have laid by
money to assist their future household. Each
household is blessed, on an average, with
about three children; the average family
used to be five in the old days of dirt, and
sickness, and mortality. It is a curious fact
in nature, that as health and strength
increases, and early dying has become less
common in a community, the number of
births will decrease. The multitude of children
born among the wretched, illustrate one of
those mysterious and admirable laws of
nature founded for the maintenance and
preservation of our race, if it indeed be true, as
most writers affirm, and the statistics of
Geneva certainly assert, that where the drain
of life is greater, new creatures are more
rapidly supplied.

The old days of dirt and squalor, called the
good old times, are illustrated charmingly by
these Geneva tables. The registers of births,
and deaths, and population, in Geneva, were
established, as we said, so early as the
sixteenth century. We enjoy, therefore, in this
instance, the peculiar power of making strict
and literal comparison between century and
century in one and the same town. The
averages now to be given are struck upon
periods of fifty and a hundred years, and
therefore may be trusted fairly. Now let us
observe.

At Geneva, out of every hundred people
born, there died, during the first year of
infancy, in the sixteenth century, twenty-
five; in the seventeenth, twenty-four; in the
eighteenth, twenty; and there die now in our
own century, fifteen. Within the second year
of life, there died out of a hundred children, in
the sixteenth century, nine; in the
seventeenth, seven; in the eighteenth, five; and
now in the nineteenth, there die four.
Between the ages of three and fifteen, the
gain of life by children in the nineteenth, as
compared with the sixteenth century, is in
the proportion of three to one. Between the
ages of sixteen and twenty-five, the odds
against the good old times are two to one;
from twenty-six to forty, they are three to
one; from forty-one to fifty, two to one.
Infancy excepted, the high rates of death in