wish it that a girl is born instead of a boy, or with flaxen hair instead of carrots; neither is it from any motive or intention that letters are often misdirected, but, on the contrary, from want of thought, and from the carelessness and haste with which letter-writing, like most other human actions, is unfortunately too often performed. But, before assuming that this carelessness and haste bear an invariable proportion to numbers, we should inquire whether the proportion of misdirected letters is the same in all human societies--the same, for instance, in France and Spain as in England. If not--if varying circumstances produce different results in this respect in different countries--it may be inferred that a variation of circumstances may produce a difference of result in the same country. It will, at any rate, be clear that there is no 'necessary and invariable order' in which letters are misdirected. In one sense, indeed, it may be said that the proportion of misdirected letters depends upon 'the state of society,' if by that expression be meant, among other things, the numerical proportion which individuals of different characters and habits bear to each other. In that sense, we may accept some far more startling propositions. We may partly admit that the state of society determines the number of murders and suicides, if by this be simply meant that the number of murders and suicides committed will depend upon the number of persons whose characters have been so moulded by circumstances as to dispose them to put an end to their own or other people's lives. But Mr. Buckle, by whom the assertion was made, was careful to explain that his meaning was the very reverse of what is here supposed. Speaking of suicide, he declares it to be 'a general law that, in a given state of society, a certain number of persons must put an end to their own lives;' adding that 'the question as to who shall commit the crime depends upon special laws,' and that 'the individual felon only carries into effect what is a necessary consequence of preceding circumstances.' In other words, it is not the amount of crime that depends upon the number of persons prepared to commit it; it is the number of criminals which depends upon the amount of crime that must needs be committed. 'Murder,' he elsewhere says, 'is committed with as much regularity, and bears as uniform a relation to certain known circumstances, as do the movements of the tides and the relations of the seasons.' 'The uniform reproduction of crime is more clearly marked, and more capable of being predicted, than are the physical laws connected with the disease and destruction of our bodies. The offences of men are the result not so much of the vices of individual offenders, as of the state of society into which the individuals are thrown.'