born is to that of females as 104.35 to 100; yet the proportions of the sexes existing at different ages, and of the respective numbers dying at any given age, are very different. Thus Mr. Finlaison has found that half the males born in England and Wales live to the age of 431; their mortality per annum is 1 in 401. Half the females live to the age of 48; their mortality per annum is 1 in 43.7. The combined mortality of both sexes is 1 in 42 per annum very nearly. The maximum expectation of male life is at four years of age; of female life at three. The maximum advantage of female life occurs at the age of 45, when it exceeds that of male life by 20 months; increasing from 12 months at 15 years of age, and decreasing to 12 months at 80 years of age, to equality at 100. Mr. Rickman has ingeniously availed himself of another use of the distinction of the sexes in the enumerations, by estimating the movement of population from the females only: thus avoiding the difficulty of the deficiency in the burial register of males, owing to the numbers dying abroad, especially in the time of war; and avoiding also the disturbance to the calculation of actually existing persons, from the number of male absentees, whether on account of war or commerce. In the proportions of the sexes in legitimate and illegitimate births, there is a discrepancy the more remarkable, as it obtains in both the English and French results. In England, 1830, the male legitimate births (184,053) exceed the female (177,968) 3-41 per cent., whilst the illegitimate male births (10,147) exceed the females (9,892) only 2.57 per cent. This is the result of the comparison of one year; and we have no means of knowing the proportion of illegitimate births in others. But, in the whole number of baptisms of the four censuses, the males (8,335,866) exceed the females (7,987,710) 4.35 per cent., which exhibits the difference still more strongly, and approximates very closely to the proportion observed by the French. For, in a calculation on twelve years-1817 to 1828, the Bureau de Longitude found, that in legitimate births the excess of males was 6.66 per cent., whilst in illegitimate it was only 5 per cent., being a difference of 1.66.* In England, that difference, in a single year, was 0.84; but the difference, when the comparison is made with the proportion in the general births for thirty years, is 1.78. We can only say with M. Guerry, La quantité dont cette fraction s'écarte du rapport general n'est pas assez petite, et les nombres observés sont trop grands pour qu'on puisse P. 52. * Essai sur la Statistique Morale de la France, par A. M, Guerry, 4to. Paris, 1833, attribuer attribuer cette difference au hazard; * et quelque singulier que cela paraisse, on est fondé à croire qu'il existe à l'egard des enfans naturels une cause quelconque, qui diminue la preponderance des naissances des garçons sur celles des filles.' But this is a question of only physiological curiosity. The proportion of illegitimate births to the legitimate involves the first principles of morality, and the very vital interests of society; and the returns present such unexpected results as we cannot pretend to account for; but we shall make a statement of the anomalies in order to excite inquiry: for if the causes of greater incontinence could be traced, there might be some hope of counteracting them. First, then, with regard to the two larger divisions. It might have been presumed that purity of manners would have prevailed more in the comparatively retired, rural, and thinly-peopled district of Wales, than in England, with all its manufacturing and town population. Yet in England the illegitimate births are only a twenty-first part of the whole number of births; whilst in Wales they are a fourteenth; in Pembrokeshire, a ninth, and in Radnorshire, an eighth; and it is remarkable that, excepting the great cotton-manufacturing county of Lancaster, the only English counties where the proportion of illegitimates equals the average of Wales, are on its borders, namely, Shropshire and Herefordshire. Again, it is singular, that in one Welsh county, Merionethshire, the proportion (a thirty-fifth) is lower than in any English county except two-and those are Middlesex and Surrey, where the proportion is only one thirty-ninth and a forty-first part. For this latter anomaly Mr. Rickman has suggested an explanation, which may in some degree also account for the others we have noticed :The general opulence (he observes) as well as the density of population in the metropolis, facilitates the concealment of illegitimate births' (Preface, 44). Still, however, much remains to be explained, and we once more invite attention to the subject.† 6 We have now, though very cursorily, gone through the chief topics suggested by these highly-important volumes; but there remains one to which the occult principle of Mr. Sadler—viz., that the fecundity of marriages was in the inverse proportion to the density of population-would, a few years ago, have given considerable consequence. Now, indeed, we had supposed that the expo. *The necessity for large numbers and for several years from which to draw any just inference may be elucidated by the fact, that in Wales alone, for 1830 only, where the illegitimate births (1439) were to the legitimate as 1 to 13, there was an excess of males of 10.99 per cent. + With regard to Middlesex and Surrey, the facility of access to common prostitutes on the part of men, and the rapid descent into common prostitution (precluding fecundity) in the case of women,-are main elements in the difference as to illegitimate births. sure sure of the allacy of that principle, in this and other journals, might have made any notice of it unnecessary. We find, however, that even M. Quetelet, profound and rigid calculator as he is supposed to be, has broached the same doctrine, in citing the words of M. Lacroix,- Cette grande disproportion (entre les campagnes et les villes) ne peut-elle pas tenir encore à une loi de la nature, qui permet d'autant moins à une population de se multiplier, que le terrain qu'elle couvre est déjà plus peuplé.'* It is somewhat extraordinary that M. Quetelet should have adopted such a principle, or having adopted, that he should not have abjured it, when, in 1832, he stated that Oriental Flanders had 260 inhabitants on 100 bonniers, with 5.19 births to a marriage; and Luxembourgh only 46 inhabitants on 100 bonniers, with only 4.67 births to a marriage. He had already, also, given the true solution of the greater mortality of cities, which he says, ne saurait être attribuée qu'aux suites de l'extrème misère, à la malpropreté, au resserrement des demeures, et à l'insalubrité qui en est la consequence dans les capitales.' And these circumstances do so often accompany a dense population, that M. Muret (the celebrated Swiss statistician) had, in 1766, like Mr. Sadler, in 1829, ventured to generalize on the subject in the form of a maxim, que la force de la vie est en raison inverse de la fecondité,' which is just as untenable as Mr. Sadler's, though Sir F. D'Ivernois lauds it as a 'principe fondamental.' It has been a matter of complaint, that Mr. Sadler's principle has been oppugned by picked instances; and if it were so, Mr. Sadler could have little right to complain-for no man ever supported an argument more by picked instances. To obviate such an objection, however, we have taken the first ten counties as they occur in alphabetical order, and have tested Mr. Sadler's principle *Recherches sur la Population, &c. des Pays Bas. p. 28. Bruxelles, 1827; from which date we may appreciate Mr. Sadler's claim to originality in his principle pub lished in 1829. Recherches sur la Mortalité, &c. pp. 9 and 27. Memoires, &c. par la Societé Economique de Berne, 1766. The comparative fecundity of marriage in various places, where it has been indisputably ascertained, is very remarkable, but does not tend to corroborate Mr. Sadler's theory. In England it cannot have been less, during the last ten years, than 4.41 to each marriage (Mr. Rickman's Preface, p. 45). In Belgium the average is 4.71 (Quetelet, Recherches, p. 26); and we may presume that in the north of France it cannot be dissimilar. To the more southern parts, therefore, must be ascribed the defalcation in France generally, from an average of 4·22 in 1817, to 3.64 in 1829. (See the work of M. Corbaux, p. 165.) And when we arrive at Geneva, the difference is astounding; the average (according to Sir F. D'Ivernois' statement to the representative council in May last) being only 275-a result which Sir F. D'Ivernois attributes to le secret pour servir la population stationnaire '— Quærere distuli, Nee scire fas est omnia, by by comparing their respective areas, population on a square mile, and numbers of births to marriages; and here follows the result: 4:03 9.43 Thus we see nothing like the working of even a false principle-that is, with any regular deviation, but a result sometimes exceeding the truth, and sometimes falling short of it—just as might be expected from any other random guess. We close here our comments on the census of 1831. The value of that census will be best estimated by those who shall live to witness the results of the next; for, in such investigations, the interest is less in absolute quantities than in proportionate-less in knowing what, in each particular, is our actual state, than in ascertaining our progress, or retrocession, in each. Most surely they who shall benefit by such comparison will owe a debt of gratitude to those who have originated such inquiries, and afforded a precedent for a lucid arrangement of the results above all, to the masterly mind and long-continued industry of Mr. Rickman. ᎪᎡᎢ, ART. IV. Specimens of the Table-Talk of S. T. Coleridge. London, 1835. 2 vols. 12mo. THE HE editor of Spence's Anecdotes says in his preface, 'The French abound in collections of this nature, which they have distinguished with the name of Ana. England has produced few examples of the kind, but they are eminently excellent. It may be sufficient to name Selden's Table-Talk, and Boswell's Life of Dr. Johnson.' These Anecdotes of Spence, after having, while in MS., furnished much amusement and instruction to the literary antiquaries of the last generation, took their place at once, on being published in extenso, among the most valuable parlour-window books in this or in any other language. That volume, rich in the fire-side gossip of Pope, Swift, and Bolingbroke, may be said to bring us down almost to the commencement of Johnson's reign as the great master and retailer of literary anecdotes and reminiscences. In its perusal we feel ourselves at home with the members of the Scriblerus Club, and are even carried back, by their unstudied communications among themselves, to a personal familiarity with the worthies of the preceding cycle. To this source we owe more than half of the little that we do know of the personal manners of both Milton and Dryden. Of Boswell we need say nothing, except that his book, in many other respects unrivalled, has this great and almost entirely peculiar advantage, that it presents its talkers, in the strict sense of the word, dramatically. Every saying is rendered doubly interesting by our knowledge of the time, the place, the occasion, and of the person or persons addressed. In almost every other point of view as unlike Dr. Johnson as one man of great faculties and great virtues can be to another, Mr. Coleridge must be allowed to have been his legitimate successor as the great literary talker of England. Had he been fortunate enough to find a faithful chronicler twenty or thirty years ago, we have no doubt the ultimate record of his conversational wisdom and ingenuity would have occupied many goodly volumes well worthy of fully sharing in the popularity of Boswell. As it is, we have much reason to be thankful that, during the last four or five of his life, a young and affectionate kinsman, possessing the learning, the taste, and the feeling which qualified him to understand and appreciate his rich talk, happened to reside in his immediate neighbourhood, and kept a journal in which he commonly set down, before going to bed, what fragments he had been able to carry away. years It will be the natural wish of every reader that Mr. Henry Coleridge had at least tried to give more of a dramatic shape to |