indigent with all her natural advantages, seems to rely for support and improvement on a very small portion of the surplus wealth of England. It is impossible to consider these phenomena without feeling anxious to account for them; to discover whether they are occasioned by circumstances unsusceptible of investigation or regulation, or by causes which can be ascertained, and may be within human control. To us, as Englishmen, it is of still deeper interest to inquire whether the causes of our superiority are still in operation, and whether their force is capable of being increased or diminished; whether England has run her full career of wealth and improvement, but stands safe where she is; or, whether to remain stationary is impossible, and it depends on her institutions and her habits, on her government, and on her people, whether she shall recede or continue to advance. The answer to all these questions must be sought in the science which teaches in what wealth consists, by what agents it is produced, and according to what laws it is distributed, and what are the institutions and customs by which production may be facilitated, and distribution regulated, so as to give the largest possible amount of wealth to each individual. And this science is _Political Economy.--Senior's Lecture on Political Economy._ * * * * * PROLONGING LIFE. The notion of prolonging life by inhaling the breath of young women, was an agreeable delusion easily credited: and one physician who had himself written on health, was so influenced by it, that he actually took lodgings in a boarding-school, that he might never be without a constant supply of the proper atmosphere. Philip Thicknesse, who wrote the "Valetudinarian's Guide," in 1779, seems to have taken a dose whenever he could. "I am myself," says he, "turned of sixty, and in general, though I have lived in various climates, and suffered severely both in body and mind; yet having always partaken of the breath _of young women, whenever they lay in the way_, I feel none of the infirmities which so often strike the eyes and ears in this great city (Bath) of sickness, by men many years younger than myself." _Wadd's Memoirs._ * * * * * FELLOW FEELING.