About a century ago, the marriages in London were under six thousand a year—they are now four times as many. In all the country, the increase has been most remarkable in the Metropolis and in Manchester. In particular localities the proportion is found to differ. Thus Yorkshire, the seat of the Woollen manufactures and of prosperous agriculturists, appears to be the most marrying district of all England; Lancashire and Cheshire, the Cotton districts, coming next; and London third. Staffordshire and Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire stand next, followed by other counties more or less blessed by the presence of Hymen, but descending gradually till we reach the matrimonial zero which is found in the agricultural parts of Middlesex. The average annual number of weddings is about one hundred and twenty-three thousand. It would help a winter night’s amusement to decide how many pounds weight of Californian produce must be wanted for the rings? How many garlands of orange blossoms for the hair and bonnets of the brides? The probabilities of marriage, of course, vary; but the rule seems to hold, that about one in seventeen unmarried women, between the ages of fifteen and forty-five, are married in a year throughout the country. Marriages have their seasons. They are least numerous in winter, and most numerous after harvest in the December quarter; the births and deaths, on the contrary, are most numerous in the winter quarter ending in March, and least numerous in the summer quarter ending September. War diminishes marriages by taking great numbers of marriageable men away from their homes; whilst a return of peace increases marriages, when soldiers and sailors with small pensions are discharged. Trade and manufactures have also become more active in England on the cessation of wars, and the employment and wages thus induced, have contributed still more to add to the numbers of those entering the married state. The establishment of new, or the extension of old, employments promotes marriages: the cotton manufactures, the canals of the last century, the railways of the present day, are examples. Indeed, an increase of their incomes, is taken by the generality of the people for the beginning of perennial prosperity, and is followed by a multitude of marriages. There are only about fifteen persons married annually, for the first time, out of a thousand living. There are about five children born in wedlock to every marriage. The births now exceed the deaths in England, in about the proportion of three to two—three young subjects present themselves for Queen Victoria, in place of every two that pass away. “The number of marriages in a nation,” says the Registrar, “perhaps fluctuates independently of external causes; but it is a fair deduction from the facts, that the marriage returns in England point to periods of prosperity, little less distinctly than the funds measure the hopes and fears of the money market.