s. What is
all knowledge but a continued accumulation and comparison of
facts, by "following the example of time?" Yet, all this is
not _original_; but we ask, in what does the intellectual
originality of the present day consist? does it add a spark to
the minds of men which they cannot find in the labours of past
ages? New books (we mean new _original_ works) are like dull,
pointless flints; the reader cannot scintillate, strike-fire,
or _steal_ from them; they are mere changes of words, often
at the sacrifice of sense to sound. A flashy novel
would, perhaps, secure the writer more celebrity than Mr.
Macculloch's _Dictionary_ will obtain for him, though his
reputation for talent and industry want not the false glory,
the common-place praise--the dullest outpourings--of a very
dull perception. Perhaps the whole series of the Waverley
Novels might have been written while this Dictionary was in
course of compilation.

We heartily wish that Mr. Macculloch's work may become as
popular as it deserves. It will then enjoy extensive fame. It
would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to acquaint the
reader with its mass of well-arranged materials; its laborious
abstracts, documents, and information upon every point
that bears upon the main subjects, commerce and commercial
navigation, practical, theoretical, and historical.
It deserves to be the library of every counting-house,
manufactory, and workshop in the empire; it is, indeed, a
delightful relief to mere figures, and we should think better
of the man whom we caught dipping into its pages by turns
with his book of accounts: for, with Addison, we have no noble
opinion of a man who is ever poring over his cash-book, and
deriving all his ideas of happiness from its balances.]

* * * * *

COMPARATIVE MORTALITY.

A curious official paper has been circulated, ordered by the House of
Commons, showing the comparative mortality in many large towns, &c.,
of the kingdom, from 1813 up to the present year. Among the towns
included in this comparative calculation of mortality are, Leeds
(town), Bradford, Holbeck, Beeston, Wigan, Preston, Norwich,
Bolton-le-Moors, London, Bury, (Lancashire), Essex, &c. The result of
the investigation of mortality may be concisely stated as follows:--Of
children born there die, in Leeds, 53 per cent