and Protestant Englishmen cannot be expected to have much love for an ecclesiastical government, or much belief in a state of political life so unlike their own as that which used to prevail in Italy. But it has been supplanted by one in which there is, in reality, far less liberty. We hear a great deal about the reconciliation of Catholicism with Italy; of proposals emanating from Florence which shall guarantee to the Holy Father his independence, assure him "an inviolable asylum, and a centre of spiritual action" in the midst of a great nation devoted to its religion. There would be less difficulty in the abstract conception of such a state of things, if the Holy See had really to do with the Italian nation, which must not be judged of by the acts and the character of the men by whom it is unhappily led. But when Count Cavour set his country in motion along the line of action which it has only too faithfully followed, he forgot that the strong may afford for a moment to throw away their character for honour and veracity, but that, after a time, the loss of credit is not compensated for by the gain of territory, or by the plunder of the weak. If no other barrier to a compromise between the Holy See and the new kingdom existed, at all events an insurmountable obstacle would be found in the faithlessness, the insincerity, the profligate disregard of acknowledged rights and solemn pledges, which have been elevated into uniform rules of conduct by the Cabinets of Victor Emmanuel. It is sad to see England applauding men such as these men who have been urged on by the revolutionary agencies behind them to deeds. which have made them greater enemies to their country than to the Church itself, which they have insulted and despoiled-because they have brought Italy to the verge of ruin and revolution, they have fastened on her, at the very outset of her career, the fatal stain of dishonesty and rapacity, and have done their best to place her in irreconcilable antagonism to the religion to which she owes her existence and her glory, and from which alone she can hope for safety and prosperity in the future.

M. de Quatrebarbes has some curious pages as to the conduct of Austria during the events of 1860. We have already mentioned the request made by Lamoricière to the Emperor Francis Joseph for some rifled cannon, and the hope expressed by him at that time that Austria would not permit the spoliation of the Holy See. It appears that the Emperor himself was disposed to take an active part against Piedmont when that power invaded Umbria and the Marches. That invasion, notwithstanding the assurances of Count Cavour-perhaps in consequence of those assurances-was not unexpected at Vienna. The Austrian divisions on the Mincio were ready for war; and when the war came, the Emperor signed the

order for their advance. But after doing this, and before the order was despatched, he called a council of his ministers and principal generals, who, with Count de Thuen at their head, made such representations as to the danger to Austria of any aggressive step, that, after many hours of debate, the Emperor consented to change his resolution. The fleet was ready at Trieste to sail for Ancona, and some intimation seems to have been given to Lamoricière that he might expect aid from that quarter. The Piedmontese Government seem to have had some good reason for feeling secure against any interference; but if Francis Joseph had carried his desire into execution, it would have been difficult to justify any opposition to his forces on the part of any other power but Piedmont herself.

We must forbear from following M. de Quatrebarbes into the details of the siege of Ancona itself. The defence was very gallant, but hopeless from the first, on account of the immense superiority of the attacking forces, and the unprepared state of the fortifications against an attack by sea. Much heroism was displayed; and it must also be confessed, that there seem to have been one or two among the defenders who did not do their duty. We cannot refrain from mentioning the high compliment paid by M. de Quatrebarbes to the batallion of St. Patrick. Lamoricière placed them in the post of honour near himself,-they occupied the citadel, the intrenched camp, and the San Stefano lunette, in face of the principal attacks of the enemy. Their courage and enthusiasm was wonderful, and it was with great difficulty that their officers could restrain them from showing themselves without cover to the Piedmontese, and taunting them whenever the artillery men from the fortress made a happy shot. We are sorry to say that the English Consul-who, however, was certainly not bound to fight or expose himself to danger-is said to have made himself ridiculous by the care which he took of his personal safety. He was a great collector of weapons and armour, and his rooms were full of implements of destruction or defence of various kinds and dates. But when the bombardment began, he hid himself in his cellar behind a formidable barrier of wine-casks, erected for the occasion, and stayed there as long as the siege lasted-while market-women were holding their stalls in the open piazzas as usual, and Sisters of Charity flitting about in the service of the wounded. We sincerely hope that this gentleman soon recovered from his fright.

Comparative Mortality of Great Capitals.

OUR recent alarm at the appearance and progress of the cholera in London may have drawn the attention of many who had before been accustomed to pass them by with indifference, to those columns in the papers in which the reports of the Registrar-General on the state of the Public Health are from time to time recorded.

But we

are perhaps hardly yet sufficiently awake to the importance and interest of the statistics there contained, any more than to the value of the short and, at first sight, rather unintelligible tables which embody, day after day, the meteorological phenomena collected in London from so many different points on our own coast and those of adjacent countries. These last statistics have an interest which does not yet belong to those which relate to the public health, in that they embrace reports from so many distinct places which can be compared together. We, of course, only publish our own statistics of health, disease, births, and deaths; and we have not yet seen our way to the information that might be gathered by a comparison of our own condition in these respects with that of others under similar circumstances. The interest and value of such a comparison is obvious enough; and some of the results which might be hoped from it, if it were systematically and scientifically made, may be guessed at by the perusal of a thin volume of less than two hundred pages, lately published in Paris by M. Vacher, which at first sight may seem not to promise very much except to professional readers, but from which we shall take the liberty of drawing a few facts which certainly seem worthy of the attention of the more general public.

Canning once said, in answer to some one who alleged a wellknown fact" against him, that there was but one thing more fallacious than a fact, and that was a figure. We must all be ready to allow that the results which we see embodied so neatly in a set of figures in statistical tables are, after all, but approaches to the truth; and they are not put forward as any thing more. Still, there

* Etude Médicale et Statistique sur la Mortalité à Paris, à Londres, à Vienne et à New-York en 1865. D'après les Documens officiels, avec une Carte Météorologique et Mortuaire. Par le Docteur L. Vacher. Paris: F. Savy, 1866.

is often a wonderful accuracy about the average results given by statistical inquiries; and it is obvious than when the result of one calculation is confirmed by that of another independent of the former, or when one uniform result is given by a continued series of inquiries, or when there is a very decided preponderance on one side of a comparison, such as cannot be accounted for by chance, it would be absurd to refuse to assent to conclusions thus obtained. With this single preliminary remark, let us proceed to some of the facts collected for us by M. Vacher.

He begins by giving due credit to this country for having taken the lead in the publication of the kind of statistics with which he has to deal. The reports of the Registrar-General are all that he can desire. New York and Vienna have followed, more or less fully, the example set in London. It has also been copied in St. Petersburg, as far as the registration of deaths is concerned; and it is hoped that a weekly publication of the results will soon be made in that city. Paris joined the movement at the end of 1864 or the beginning of 1865. There is, however, some difference of system. The chief point is, that in England the medical man who attends a sick person reports the cause of death; in Paris there are certain official physicians, vérificateurs des décès, and these, instead of the attending physician, assign the cause. The superiority of the English system seems to be acknowledged. M. Vacher's book is founded on the reports thus produced.

His first business is, of course, to settle approximately the population of the four capitals with whose statistics he deals-a matter of considerable difficulty, even with all the results of the census before him. He calculates the number of the inhabitants of Paris in 1865 at 1,863,000: those of London were 3,028,600; those of Vienna, 560,000; and those of New York, 1,025,000 (in 1864). At the present rate of increase, Paris will double its population in 32 years, London in 40, Vienna in 44, and New York in 13. On the other hand, this increase is not to be set down to the excess of births over deaths, which in London, in 20 years before 1861, was only 328,189-about a third of the actual increase (35 per cent). In a similar period, the births excecded the deaths in Paris by only 13 (and a fraction) per cent of the whole increase. Immigration has therefore the largest share in the increase of the population. A flow is continually setting in from the country to the town in the age in which we live, and it enriches the largest towns and the capitals especially. New York, receiving annually so many immigrants from Europe, is, of course, beyond the others in its gains from this source. Paris has undergone great vicissitudes as to the number

of its inhabitants. In 1762 the population seems to have been about 600,000. It fell off immensely during the Revolution; even in 1800 it was only 547,756. From 1790 to 1810 the number of deaths exceeded the number of births. Since that time the proportion has been reversed, except in years of great epidemics.

Of the four capitals with which M. Vacher deals, Vienna, the smallest, had the largest proportion of deaths in 1865. In Vienna the proportion was 1 to 31 of the inhabitants; in Paris, notwithstanding the ravages of the cholera in October-causing 6591 deaths (nearly an eighth of the whole)-it was 1 to 36; in New York, 1 to 40; in London, 1 to 41. In Paris, London, and New York, the deathrate has diminished in its proportion to the population for some time past. In Paris, in the three decades of years from 1830 to 1860, it fell successively from 1 to 31, to 1 to 34, and then to 1 to 38. There has been the same improvement in the other two cities. In New York, fifteen years ago, the rate of deaths was as 1 to 22nearly twice as high as at present. We do not see any statement in M. Vacher's pages as to the case of Vienna. He attributes the improvement in Paris to some extent to the great public works and measures for securing the health of the population which have marked the Second Empire; but much more, it would seem, to the better management of the hospitals. In Paris and Vienna a much larger proportion of the inhabitants die in hospitals than in New York and London; and, as far as we are concerned, M. Vacber includes workhouses and asylums of all kinds under the general name of hospital. He finds, on comparing some scanty statistics of the last century with the facts of the present, that in old times the number of deaths in hospitals was far greater in proportion to the cases admitted than now; and he thinks that, in Paris at least, this almost explains the improvement in the death-rate. In New York the same improvement may have had many causes, but it is remarkably coincident as to time with the magnificent changes made, at an immense cost, in the water-supply of that city. From some meteorological tables compiled with great care by M. Vacher, we gather the rather surprising result that the variations of temperature during the year, which have considerable influence on the death-rate, are greatest at Vienna (nearly 27°), next at New York (25°), much lower in Paris (17°), and lowest of all in London (15°).

One of the most interesting questions at the present time on this subject is that of the water-supply. M. Vacher begins with a cordial tribute to the Romans cn this head. The magnificent aqueducts by which the city of Rome was supplied date from the time of the early Republic, though the Emperors increased their number. At an early