in the well-drained, lighted, watered, and
ventilated buildings, nearly five hundred were
children under ten. Of these five hundred
only five died in a year. If their chance of
life and death had been the same as is
encountered by such children in the whole of
London, there would have died of the five
hundred in a year not five—but nearly five
times five—as many as twenty-three. For,
on an average, taking the rich and poor
together, well drained and ill drained, we
Londoners lose forty-six in every thousand
of our little children. In the ill-drained bit
of Kensington just cited, there have died every
year out of a thousand children, not less
than one hundred and nine. If we were all
in London lodged as wholesomely as those
artisans who are tenants of the Metropolitan
Association, it may be said—if we draw
from a limited experiment a wide conclusion—
that we should have twenty-three thousand
a year. If we were all lodged as unwholesomely
as the inhabitants of the Potteries in
Kensington, with the same reservation it
may be said that the yearly loss of life in
London would be greater than it is by forty
thousand.

The twenty-three thousand Londoners,
fewer or more, who in this year, eighteen
hundred and fifty-four, are otherwise to die
through the want of a complete sanitary
system, had better bestir themselves and look
after reforms. The difficulty is to know,
taking the number as we find it, which of us
are to be enlisted in the army of dead men
claimed yearly by King Dirt. A large part
of the army, certainly, will be made up of
those who are already cast out from society.
Another large part will be made up of the
children. The rest will consist of adult people,
more or less influential, who can make
their voices heard, if they choose to speak.

STANDING ON CEREMONY.

THERE are heroes who never get the laurel,
and martyrs who never win the crown; but
is their worth the less, are their virtues
poorer, than if they had had trumpets blown
before them for a thousand years, and statues
erected to their memory in tons of iron and
quarryfuls of stone? No; and therefore we
think we do a great and charitable action in
producing for the reader's delectation a short
notice of one of the most shamefully neglected
of the great men of old. Perhaps his very
name is unknown. Yet he was "that knowing
knight and well accomplished courtier,"
Sir John Finett, who was Master of the
Ceremonies to King James and Charles the
First, and who told more lies for the good of
his country, and endured more plagues, and
settled more disputes, and gave more invitations
to masques and supper parties, than any
man of his time.

This illustrious personage left behind him,
for the improvement of the remotest generations,
a treatise which the preface says "goes
indented with many signall passages of the
Reception and Treatments, of the Conduct
and Audiences, the Pretences and Precedencies,
with divers Contests and Puntilioes of
State between forren Ambassadors." The
date of the publication is sixteen hundred and
fifty-six; but the journal of his great employments
begins with sixteen hundred and
twelve. It contains the real unadulterated
experiences of a gentleman usher for seven-
and-thirty years. He is associated in his
office with Sir Lewis Lewkner, and no sooner
does he receive his appointment than his
troubles begin. The Count Palatine of the
Rhine landed at Gravesend on Friday night,
the sixteenth of October, sixteen hundred and
twelve, and achieved his journey to London
on the Sunday following, for the purpose of
marrying the Lady Elizabeth, King James's
only daughter. "His train," says Sir John.
"consisted of a number not so great as
gallant, most of them being much better
fashioned and better cloathed than Germany
usually sends them forth. There were of them
eight counts (besides Count Henry of
Nassau), about six-and-thirty gentlemen, and of
the rest about an hundred and fifty." Essex
House near Temple Bar was assigned as his
usual abode; but he had private apartments
at Whitehall and also at St. James's. On the
thirteenth of February following, the Master
of the Ceremonies was sent by the Lord
Chamberlain (the Earl of Suffolk) from his
Majesty to the archduke's ambassador,
Monsieur de Boiscot, with this formal invitation,
to the marriage of the princess: "That his
Majesty who desireth to perform all things
with conveniency, having invited the French
Ambassador and the Venetian to assist at the
first daye's solemnity, requested him to
honour the second or third daye's either dinner
or supper, or both with his presence.
After some time of pause, his first question
was (with a troubled countenance) whether
the Spanish Ambassador were invited? I
answered (answerable to my instructions in
case of such demand), 'that hee was sicke,
and could not be there.' 'He was yesterday,'
quoth he, 'so well that the offer might
have very well been made him, and perhaps
accepted.' To this I replied, 'That his
Majesty having observed that the French and
Venetian Ambassadors holding between them
one course of correspondence, and the Spanish
and Archduke's another, their invitations had
been usually joynt.

"This he denyed, saying, 'The French had
been sundry times invited to masques, &c.,
and not the Venetian; the Venetian, and
not the French; the Spaniard, the like; but
hee, the archduke's ambassador, never; that
for his own particular person (as hee was
Boiscot) he should think himself honoured
to be called by his Majesty on any terms,
were it to serve up a dish to the Princess's