eminence when we come to diseases of the respiratory organs, asthma, bronchitis, influenza, and the like: Paris losing between 7000 and 8000 a year against our 12,500. It is in the commoner diseases that the worst features of London mortality in 1865 were found Typhoid was nearly three times as fatal last year in London as in Paris; measles four times as fatal; scarlatina not far short of twenty times; whoopingcough more than thirteen times. As the population of London is to that of Paris as five to three, it is clear to how great an extent the balance was against us. It was probably an accident. These diseases prevail very generally for a time, and then retire: and we have lately been visited by a period of their prevalence.

We have hitherto spoken only of diseases; but M. Vacher's researches extend to the comparative frequency of deaths of other kinds. In suicides, New York has the best account to give, Paris the worst. To speak roughly, London has twice as many suicides as New York, Vienna twice as many as London, Paris more than twice as many as Vienna-in comparison, that is, with the total number of deaths of all kinds. The actual numbers stand thus: Paris 716, London 267, Vienna 813, New York 36. For the last nine years there has been little change in the number in London; in New York it has diminished, in Paris it has increased, having more than doubled itself since 1839. The two years, 1848 and 1830, which were marked by revolutionary movements, were also marked by a diminution in the number of suicides. The relative proportion of suicides increases with age; that is, it is four times as frequent with people above 70 as with people between 20 and 30. Paris has for a long time been noted as a city in which there were more sui cides than any other. More than eighty years ago, Mercier noted this, and attributed it to the rage for speculation. Other writers have since attempted to find a reason for it in the prevalence of democratic ideas. We suppose that

both democratic ideas and speculation are not unknown in New York, yet that city (and indeed the State itself) is remarkably free from suicides, and a great number of those that occur are said to be of Europeans.

But if Paris bears the palm in selfslaughter, no city can vie with London in slaughter of another kind. Violent deaths are nearly three times as frequent in London as in Paris. As many as 2241 persons were slain in London last year; as many, that is, as would be enough for the number of the killed in a sanguinary battle: 328 were burnt, 405 were suffocated, (this probably includes children overlaid by their mothers,) 40 were poisoned, 767 disposed of by "fractures and contusions," 232 were killed by carriage accidents; leaving 469 to be laid to the account of other accidents. In the other three capitals the proportion of deaths by accidents to the whole number of deaths ranges from under one per cent to under two per cent; in London it is just three per cent. Finally, London had 132 murders to give an account of in 1865, Paris had 10, and New York only 5.

We are sorry that the last fact which we glean from M. Vacher's interesting tables must be one rather disparaging to the great Transatlantic city which we have last named. Disparaging, that is, positively rather than comparatively; and we fear that, if the statistics which we are now to quote do not reveal a terrible state of things in London also, it is because on this head our admirable system of registration has given M. Vacher no assistance at all.

of deaths as one to ten; in New York as one to fifteen; in Vienna they are as one to twenty-three. Twenty years ago, the Préfet of the Seine addressed a circular to the maires of Paris, in which he drew their attention to the great number of these children, and pointed out that it was natural to conclude that their deaths were too often the result of crime. In New York similar complaints have been made, and we are significantly told that full reports cannot be obtained on the subject. As to London, we find a large number of deaths, 1400 or 1500 a year, set down to " premature birth and debility." We fear it would be quite impossible to give an account of the number of births which are prevented -contrary to the laws of God and man alike. We need hardly do more than allude to the frightful increase of infanticide, on which Dr. Lankester has lately spoken so strongly. Mr. Humble's Essay on the subject in Mr. Orby Shipley's volume contains some very starting statistics. There are as many as 12,000 women in London to whom this crime may be imputed. “In other words," says Mr. Humble, “one in every thirty women (I presume, between fifteen and forty-five) is a mur

deress." We must hope that there is exaggeration about this; but if it were one in every thirty thousand, it would be bad enough--a state of things calling down the judgments of heaven on the land.

The Anglican writer to whom we have just alluded speaks with some apparent prejudice against the most obvious remedy for infanticide—the establishment of foundling hospitals, perfectly free. There may be some objections to these institutions, but we must confess that, in the face of the facts on which we are commenting, they seem to us rather like arguments against life-boats because they may encourage oversecurity in exposure to the dangers of the sea. If Mr. Humble will read, or read again, Dr. Burke Ryan's Essay on Infanticide, which gained the Fothergillian prize medal some time ago, and in which the fact seems to be proved that the crime is more common in England than anywhere else, he will perhaps see reason to conclude, from the French statisties there adduced, that foundling hospitals are more effectual in preventing this abominable evil than anything else that has ever been devised.

New Electric Machines.-At the conversazione given by the president of the Royal Society at Burlington House, London, the display of newly constructed astronomical, optical, and other philosophical instruments afforded a gratifying proof of improvements in the mode of construction, and of increased skill on the part of the constructors. The large spectroscope, which is to be used in combination with Lord Rosse's monster telescope, was a triumph of workmanship and of philosophical adaptation of means to ends; and we may expect ere long to

In

hear of important discoveries in spectroscopic phenomena. Mr. C. W. Siemens and Professor Wheatstone exhibited each one a remarkable electric machine of his own invention, which demonstrated in a surprising way the convertibility of mechanical force into electricity. these machines, a bar of soft iron, wrapped lengthwise in copper wire, is made to rotate between two other bars of soft iron, which are fixed. The rotating bar is inoculated, so to speak, with a small touch of magnetism, and then being set spinning very rapidly, the small touch

is generated into a stream of electricity, which passes off with a crackling noise, increasing or diminishing in proportion to the rotation. In a laboratory, such a machine would be highly serviceable, as it could be used to generate large quantities of electricity very cheaply, and there is no doubt but that many other ways of turning it to account will be discovered. Mr. Siemens has already discovered one most important way, namely, the lighting-up of buoys and beacons at a distance from the shore, by sending a current of electricity to them through a submarine cable. That is the way in which he purposes to employ the electricity generated by his machine: his method has been approved by the Commissioners of Northern Light-houses, who intend to apply it to light the buoys and beacons that mark the most dangerous spots round the coast of Scotland. But of all wonderful electric machines, the one invented by Mr. H. Wilde of Manchester is the most wonderful. A machine which weighs about four and a half tons, including one ton of copper wire, and which requires an eight-horse steamengine to keep its armature in rotation, must necessarily produce tremendous effects. It gives off electric fire in torrents the light produced is intense, and is quite as useful to photographers as sunlight, with the advantage over the sun, that it can be used on dark days and at night. This light, as we hear, is already employed in manufacturing establishments, and is to be introduced into light-houses. A French company, who have purchased the right to use it in France, will try it first in the lighthouse on Cape Grisnez, whence, as is said, the light will radiate not only all across the Channel, but some distance into the southern counties of England. Besides the production of light, the new machine is applicable to important manufacturing purposes; the size of the machine being altered to suit special circumstances. A well-known firm at Birmingham are about to use it, instead of a galvanic battery, for the deposition of copper on articles required to be coated with that metal. In this case, the electricity of the machine is substituted for the acid and zinc of the battery, and will cost less. In another instance, the machine is to be used for the production of ozone in large quantities for employment in bleaching operations. Professor Tyndall exhibited the sensitive flame, on

which he had given a lecture at the Royal Institution: or, to be more explicit, he made experiments to show the action of sound on flame. The results are remarkable. A tall flame, looking like an ordinary gas-flame, issuing from a circular orifice in an iron nipple, behaves in an extraordinary way when, by increased pressure, it is raised to fourteen or sixteen inches in length. If a shrill whistle be blown in any part of the room, it suddenly drops down to about half the length, and rises again immediately on cessation of the sound. A blow of a hammer on a board produces a similar effect; and still more so when the blow is on an anvil: the flame then jumps with surprising briskness, the reason being that the ring of the anvil combines those higher tones to which the flame is most sensitive. So tuning-forks, at the ordinary pitch, produce no effect; but if made to vibrate one thousand six hundred, or two thousand, or more times in a second, the flame responds energetically. In another experiment, a fiddle is played in presence of a flame twenty inches in length-the low notes produce no effect; but when the highest string is sounded, "the jet," to quote Professor Tyndall's own words, "instantly squats down to a tumultuous bushy flame, eight inches long." And the same effect is produced by strokes on a bell at twenty yards' distance: at every stroke the flame drops instantaneously. last experiment is a good illustration of the rapidity with which sound is propagated through air, for there is no sensible interval between the bell-stroke and the shortening of the flame. Another flame, nearly twenty inches long, is yet more sensitive, for the rustle of a silk dress, a step on the floor, creaking of boots, dropping of a small coin, all make it drop down suddenly to eight inches, or become violently agitated. At twenty yards' distance, the rattle of a bunch of keys in the hand shortens the flame, and it is affected even by the fall of a piece of paper, or the plashing of a raindrop. To the vowel U, it makes no response; to 0, it shakes; E makes it flutter strongly; and S breaks it up into a tumultuous mass. Many more instances might be given, but these will suffice to show that surprising effects are produced by sound. To the scientific inquirer they will be serviceable as fresh illustrations in the science of acoustics.-Chambers's Journal.

This

AMERICAN BOYS AND GIRLS. Two Essays from the recently published volume, "American Leaves." By Samuel Osgood, Minister of the Church of the Messiah, New-York. Harpers. 1867.

These essays were reprinted, the author tells us, at the request of a lady, for general circulation, with the hope of doing some good to the rising generation, and those who have the charge of bringing them up. We hope they may do good, and they certainly will if they exercise any practical influence at all upon either parents or young people. Their literary merit is undeniable. The topics they touch upon are, however, so painfully momentous that it is impossible to dwell with mere critical enjoyment upon their readable qualities as essays to be amused with during a leisure hour. Their charm of style is only to be appreciated as a means of alluring attention to the very grave and alarming truths which they contain. The author touches with a light and delicate hand upon a very sore and diseased spot in our social system, and hints, in a manner which is intelligible to the instructed without being dangerous to the innocent, at evils which may well awaken the alarm of every one who is solicitous for the wellbeing of the family, the community, and the race. We are especially pleased with his very sound remarks upon the luxury, extravagance, and effeminacy which are exercising such a corrupting influence upon American society. We think, however, the doctor is more successful in pointing out the evils which exist than in proposing a remedy for them. The sacramental doctrine of matrimony, the Catholic law maintaining its absolute indissolubility, the sacrament of penance, and the authority of a church which is a supreme judge and lawgiver, executed by a priesthood who are independent of the opinions, caprices, and trammels of worldly society, are alone sufficient to reform the vitiated, or preserve the integrity of youth. It were as easy to catch the devil in a mouse-trap as to renovate society by any means which Unitarian Christianity has at its disposal.

The author's very irrelevant digression

upon the Catholic doctrine of celibacy adds one more to the numberless instances in which respectable writers criticise rashly without understanding their subject. He says, (p. 109,) "We know very well that theorists of extreme classes, who have noted the decrease in the number of marriages in high life, are inclined to rejoice at it, and for opposite reasons: the one class because they think celibacy to be the higher condition." After several more passages, in which the language is very ambiguous, and may easily be understood as veiling a covert insinuation against the Catholic clergy and religious communities, the author concludes his remarks thus: "We believe that a true Christian wife has a purity that angels may not scorn and many a nun might covet, and that the man who keeps his marriage vows need not ask of any ghostly monk for lessons in manly virtue. The longer we live the more we reverence God's obvious law, and the less we admire the devices of men who forbid marriage, and so undertake to be wiser than God."

It is quite the reverse of truth that a Catholic moralist, whether "ghostly" or otherwise, approves of or recommends or rejoices in a general practice of celibacy among either the wealthy or the poorer classes. The Catholic clergy recommend and favor marriage for the generality of persons as by far the best and happiest state for them. The Catholic doctrine does not disparage the purity of Christian wives, or the virtue of married men who are faithful to their matrimonial obligations. The spectral gentleman, whose lessons the doctor politely declines in advance, would probably, if he had the chance to give one, pass over the evangelical counsels, and enlarge on the moral duty of representing things as they are. The Catholic Church does not "forbid marriage." She teaches that it is a sacrament. The Greek Church has corrupted it by permitting divorce; every Protestant Church has done the same; the civil law has laid its barbarous hand upon it to drag it from the protecting power of the church. The Roman Church alone has first raised it to its proper elevation and indissolubility, and afterward defend

ed it by her uncompromising law from desecration. We advise the doctor to turn his attention more undividedly to the work of rehabilitating marriage in the rights of which corrupt morals and legislation have deprived it, and not to distress himself with the fear lest the sacrament should be despised or neglected by Catholics.

SERMON ON THE DIGNITY AND VALUE OF LABOR. By the Rev. Joseph Fransioli, Pastor of St. Peter's Church, Brooklyn, L. I.

This is a first-class popular sermon; plain, practical, and encouraging. That Christianity has redeemed the masses in elevating and dignifying manual labor is plain enough to the student of history. That which was a curse in Adam is turned into a blessing in Christ. It is equally true that when men forget the Christian aim of life and suffer themselves to be guided, as too large a class of our modern society does, by heathen principles, labor becomes contemptible, poverty becomes a misfortune, and the wearing of patches and rags a crime. The preacher thus fitly characterizes labor: Work is of divine origin. It is not a human invention, or a system adopted by civil society for its wants in the different classes; it is a divine institution, an obligation imposed by God's eternal wisdom upon all men without distinction whatsoever. It is a divine institution distributing labor in its various branches among all men, not crearing, properly speaking, different classes. Work is leading men towards God, the centre of perfection. Work, then, ennobles man, and the true dignity and worthiness of a man is to be measured by the proportion of his work."

66

re

Again, he is justly severe upon the modern distinction of "low" and 64 spectable" classes in this false sense. "The father who carries the shovel on his shoulders to dig the foundation of your buildings; the son who, early in the morning, is seen walking, tools in hand; the washerwoman and the servant girl who clean your clothes and honestly and faithfully do the work of your houses, are not low. They discharge a noble task which their families appreciate and which God will reward. Do you know who belong to the very lowest classes of men and Christians? Those that specu

late on the lives of the poor laborers by building monstrous tenement houses, where bad ventilation, poor light, scarcity of water, and dilapidated rooms lead the over-crowded and over-taxed inmates to misery and a premature death. Those that sue for divorces in the courts, ride in carriages, and display themselves in public with more than one wife, more than one family, more than one God; trampling on human and divine law. Those that spend their nights in gambling, their days in hypocritical schemes, who never balance their expenses with their revenues, and consume double the amount of their salaries, and leave their bills unpaid or shamefully defraud their employers. These and many others of the same stamp, whose number is countless; these swell the figures of the low classes." This is preaching which reasons "of judgment and justice," and tells the truth without fear or favor. is a refreshing sermon, and lacks in nothing but in having been too hastily printed, being full of typographical errors.

It

FRITHIOF'S SAGA. From the Swedish of Esaias Tegnér, Bishop of Wexiö. By the Rev. William Lewery Blackley, M.A. First American edition, edited by Bayard Taylor: pp. 201, 12mo. New-York, Leypoldt & Holt. 1867.

Several translations of this beautiful poem have been made in English, each of which had its own peculiar merit. An accurately literal translation of a foreign book possesses the value of presenting to us just what the author says; but the manner of his speech, the true spirit which gives life and character to his work, must necessarily be wanting. Such was the translation of Tegnér's poem, by Prof. George Stephens, published at London in 1839. Prof. Longfellow was more successful in the poetic versions he gave in an article on the poet contributed by him to the North American Review of July, 1837. That of Mr. Blackley before us is not only a faithful translation, but is also English poetry, preserving in its style enough of the wild Scandinavian spirit to mark its origin. As a specimen we subjoin the following extract from "Frithiof at Sea." The hero is compelled to make a dangerous voyage by two kings, Helge and Halfdan, whose sister Ingeborg he is wooing contrary to their consent: