been dogs for any human kindred that
acknowledged them. Who counted the phantoms
in the street, that should have been young
and beautiful, and women? Not Laïs in the
Regent's park, not Aspasia in her brougham,
not Phrynia at the casino, not Timandra in
the boudoir, not these, but that phantom-world
which we see gibbering in the gaslight;
flittering in the shadows of Westminster
Abbey and among the trees of the Queen's
Park; cowering in the bays of the bridges;
brawling with tipsy revellers; shrieking
in the stillness of the night; falling into
fits on the pavement; struggling with the
police; lurking on the bridges; hovering at
corners; creeping by taverns; nameless,
homeless, sexless, friendless, foodless,
penniless, despairing, drunk and dying.

And the gay young sparks who were out
all night? And that sad dog Tom Pipes,
who hadn't been home for a week? And
A. B. C., who was entreated to return to his
distracted mother, when all should be forgotten,
and he should be allowed to go to sea
(whither we sincerely hope he went and was
dead sick)? And the young Mulatto lady in a
white chip bonnet and cherry coloured boots,
who took a second class ticket to London from
the Pyganwyssel station, and had not since
been heard of? And Mr. Silas Duffer, grocer of
Blackburn, who absconded under rather more
than a suspicion of being a fraudulent bankrupt,
and of whose whereabouts the superintendent
of the Blackburn police would be
glad to hear, to the extent of five pounds
reward? And John Rose or Rolls, a native
of Oxfordshire, aged twenty-nine, absent from
the parish of Guestling, under a cloud not
very like a whale, but very like an ewe-sheep,
stolen; who was wanted so badly in the
columns of the Hue and Cry, and was
supposed to be in company with "a woman
from Hastings, fat, and in the habit of
smoking a short pipe?" And all the soldiers,
sailors, and marines who had abruptly parted
company with their disconsolate commanding
officers, not to say deserted, taking with
them the greater part of their regimental
necessaries? And Baron Leightdigit, and
Count De Bilko, and Madame de Shoppliftt,
and Captain Teetotum, and the Honourable
Miss Amory; for all of whose addresses the
secretary of that occult association, the
London Society for the Protection of Trade
would be very much obliged'? And Foxy
William; who, when the enumerators were
peaceably making up the schedules, was
transacting business in the plate closet of a villa at
Camberwell with a piece of black crape over
his face, a jemmy and a wax candle in one
pocket, and a pistol and a life-preserver in the
other. Where were all these units of
population on the night that the people were
numbered? How many were enumerated
under false names? How many were not
enumerated at all? Were people with aliases
put down twice? If the Truth could in all
cases have been told and made manifest,
what awful secrets those thirty-eight thousand
enumeration books would have been able to
disclose!

It was found that there were in Great
Britain, four million three hundred and
twelve thousand three hundred and eighty-eight
separate families, against two million
two hundred and sixty thousand two
hundred and two families in eighteen hundred
and one. There were of inhabited houses
three million six hundred and forty-eight
thousand three hundred and forty-seven,
holding twenty million eight hundred and
sixteen thousand three hundred and fifty-one
inhabitants. The population of London was
two millions three hundred and sixty-two
thousand two hundred and thirty-six, against
nine hundred and fifty-eight thousand eight
hundred and sixty-three in eighteen hundred
and one.

Lest your breath, eye-sight, and patience
should be entirely taken away by these
tremendous arrays of figures, let us see what we
can gather from the explanation attempted to
be given by the computers and reporters, of
the vast and disproportionate increase of the
population since the commencement of the
present century.

We say disproportionate because, since
eighteen hundred and one, we have had a
war of fifteen years' duration, and of the
most sanguinary character; because emigration
has been a gigantic and yearly increasing
drain on the population; and, most
disproportionate of all because, in seventeen
hundred and fifty-one, the population only
amounted to seven millions, against twenty-one
millions in eighteen hundred and fifty-one;
an increase of fourteen millions in
eighteen hundred and fifty-one, while the
increase of the numbers in the century
preceding seventeen hundred and fifty-one (from
sixteen hundred and fifty-one to seventeen
hundred and fifty-one) was only one
million.

Now is this to be traced, it is asked, to a
simple question of supply and demand? Is
it something fortuitous, or entirely inexplicable?
Is it the result of some simple change
in the institution of families; or of some
miraculous addition to the powers of
population? To what is this marvellous
multiplication of the population, and its previous
slow progress due? The census reporters
find a reasonable solution of the question,
and ascribe the increase to three prime
causes. Science, good manners, and marriage.
In the first place, science is producing an
immense decrease in mortality. We have (shame
to us!) our choleras, epidemics, and endemics
still, but the great plagues that decimated
England in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries—the black fevers, falling sicknesses,
that carried off their thousand and tens of
thousands at a time, are no more. The
extinction of the great plagues was followed