IGNORANCE IN ENGLAND.--Taking the whole of northern Europe--including Scotland, and France and Belgium (where education is at a low ebb), we find that to every 2-1/4 of the population, there is one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there is only one such pupil to every fourteen inhabitants. It has been calculated that there are at the present day in England and Wales nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write--that is to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place of instruction. These statements would be hard to believe, if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face. If we look in the _Gazette_, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a month passes but some unhappy man, rolling, perhaps, in wealth, but wallowing in ignorance, is put to the _experimentum crucis_ of "his mark." The number of petty jurors--in rural districts especially--who can only sign with a cross, is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark," but men of substance. A housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the plainest rudiments of education in this country have fallen, are too common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us.--_Dickens's "Household Words."_ [From The Ladies' Companion.] MEN AND WOMEN. A woman is naturally gratified when a man singles her out, and addresses his conversation to her. She takes pains to appear to the best advantage, but without any thought of willfully misleading. How different is it with men! At least it is thus that women in general think of men. The mask with them is deliberately put on and worn as a mask, and wo betide the silly girl who is too weak or too unsuspicious, not to appear displeased with the well-turned compliments and flattering attentions so lavishly bestowed upon her by her partner at the ball. If a girl has brothers she sees a little behind the scenes, and is saved much mortification and disappointment. She discovers how little men mean by attentions they so freely bestow upon the last new face which takes their fancy.