... IN the ninth annual report of the Scotch Registrar-General, published early this year, Dr. Stark announced the result of an investigation he had been making as to the relative death-rates of the married and unmarried in Scotland at different periods of life. He had discovered that between 20 and 25 years of age the death-rate of Scotch bachelors in i863 was double that of married men; that ...

... I THE first four volumes of these interesting Remains, which, it is said, are being prepared for the press at the express desire of the Emperor of' Austria, have now been published. They contain a description, in the form of a diary, of the travels of the then young Archduke (he was eighteen years old when he made his first journey) in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Algiers, between ...

... 4 PARLIAMENT was last session so obviously glad to be rid of the question of Reform on any terms that it would be too much to expect it to show much alacrity in reverting to the subject. Not only, however, do the Scotch and Irish bills remain to be disposed of, but the English measure, although passed into an Act, will still require careful reconsideration before it can be allowed to come into ...

... FAIR WOMEN. * AN old baronet, Sir Howard Champion, of good family and property,.. has three daughters, two of whom marry well and fill the ancestral hall with grandcbildren; but the third runs away with a handsome young: gentleman farmer in the neighbourhood, and is accordingly renounced by her indignant family. She enjoys a great though short-lived happiness, and dying, leaves an only ...

... ` MRs. NORTON has been for too many years known to the public as a grace- ful and accomplished writer to require any introduction from the critics. Her pen, whether as that of an advocate or a novelist, has almost uniformly been employed in defence or in behalf of her own sex. In the first character the wrongs she so effectively portrayed carried to the minds of those who read her letters and ...

... SA/ZOLLETT.* TUE great English novelists do not stand such a good chance with posterity as the great English poets. They are exposed to a far severer competi tion. We have ceased to expect, nowadays, to have more than one or two poets of real greatness at a time; but novelists of undoubted merit are comparatively numerous. How much Fielding and Smollett are actually read by our circulating ...

... MR. LEWES'S HISTORY OF-PIIILOSOPHY.* [SECOND NOTICE.] IN a former notice of Mr. Lewes's History of Philosophy we finished Whlat we had to sav on his account of the long struggle of ancient philosophy which ended in its incorporation with Christian theology. His second volume, which is in our-opinion much the more interesting of - the two, carries down the history of philosophy from the ...

... ELIZALE7E/AN DRAMATISTS, No. VJ.-MARSTOT.*k THE dramatists of whom we have spoken hith1eri preceded Shakspeare, or were at least his equals in age and literary standing. Greene indeed speaks contemptuously of him as the only Shakescene in the country, as an upstart crow beautified in the feathers of Greene's own plumrge, as a tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide, and so forth. But ...

... ` 'THERE are few people whose attention has not at some time or other been arrested by the marvellous wealth of shell fish exhibited daily in the less fashionable quarters of our most populous towns, who have not occasion, ally paused to meditate over the prodigious lobsters, the massive crabs- the myriads upon myriads of shrimps displayed on the slabs of our middle-class fishmongers, who have ...

... LIFE AND TIAIES OF VOL TAIRE. THE fashion of issuing a biography by instalments like a serial novel, though it may be convenient for writer and publisher, is not a pleasant one for readers. A biography should be like a dinner, or the French Republic -tne et indivisible. It frustrates the appreciation, if it does not balk the appetite, to wait long between the courses. Mr. Espinasse has, ...

... N No THOROUGHFARE AT THE ADELPHI. ADAPTATION to the stage being generally the fate of the popular novel at some period of its career, it is not surprising that Mr. Dickens's works should almost invariably have undergone the process of con- version into plays, although this proceeding has now and then taken place entirely without the author's sanction, and, indeed, in disre- gard of his most ...

... It is announced in all the papers that the Queen has postponed her departure from Windsor in order to receive the Sultan. On Monday, by command of the Queen, the Prince of Wales will visit the Royal Italian Opera in state, in honour of the Sultan, who will accompany the Prince of 'Wales to the opera. The Queen of Prussia (who has been on a visit to tile Queen for several days past) left ...