In civilized Rome, the value of life had probably reached a very high point; in barbarian Europe we may be sure it fell to an exceedingly low point. From that low point, in civilized Europe, it has been slowly but gradually rising, until, in modern times, the whole mass of the European population has, to say the very least, reached the highest point attained by the select class in ancient Rome. But in some favoured spots in Europe, the whole mass has advanced considerably beyond the select class in ancient Rome. In England, for example, the expectation of life, at the present day, for the mass of the people, as compared with that of the mass at Ostend, which, as has been shown, is the same as that of the whole of Europe, is as follows:— At birth 41½ years. At 12 46¾ 17 41½ 22 38⅜ 27 35¼ 32 32 37 28¾ 42 25½ 47 22¼ 52 19 57 16 62 13 67 10½ 72 8 77 6 It should be borne in mind that the females of the mass exceed in duration the lives of the males at every age by two or three years. The earliest statistical document bearing on the rate of mortality, in any European nation, emerging from the state of barbarism, appears to be a manuscript of the fourteenth century, relating to the mortality of Paris, from which M. Villermé has calculated that the mortality of Paris at that period was one in sixteen. How the individual facts contained in this manuscript were collected, from which M. Villermé's calculation is made, does not appear; and it makes the mortality so excessive as to be altogether incredible. Yet a statement scarcely less extraordinary is made with regard to Stockholm, in the middle of the last century. From a table given by Dr. Price, vol. ii., p. 411, it appears that, for all Sweden, between the years 1756 and 1763, the expectation of life Of males at birth, was Females, 33¼ years. 35¾ years. while at the same time it was at Stockholm, For males at birth, Females, 14¼ years. 18 years. Whereas, for the twenty years preceding 1800, it was, for all Sweden, at birth, Males, Females, 34¾. 37½.