A celebrated French writer on hygiene has a theory that dying at anything under a hundred years of age is all a mistake—that it is people’s own blame, or the blame of their progenitors, if they die earlier. Far be it from me to dispute the accuracy of this very cheering though somewhat irreverent theory. I would allow a handsome discount of ten per cent., and take ninety as a fair age to attain to. The method of living till ninety, however, is either not understood or very slightly acted on. Lord Brougham was acquainted with it. He saw there was a knack in giving fair-play to the system by means of an annual restorative. Every year he went off at the right time to Cannes; cheating alike the winter and the grave-digger as long as flesh and blood could do so. Other individuals, making the necessary sacrifices, now adopt a similar policy. They leave and return to England with the swallows; by which not unpleasant contrivance they spin out their lives, if not to ninety, still to something considerably beyond what, to all appearance, was to be their allotted span. In contemplating a residence abroad for four or five months, it is, as just hinted, all important to go to an appropriate place. Besides consulting medical advisers, it might be well to peruse the well-known work on _Climate_ by Sir James Clark, and also the singularly comprehensive and entertaining work of Dr J. Henry Bennet, entitled a _Winter and Spring on the Shores of the Mediterranean_. In his own person, this ingenious author exemplifies the benefit of stopping in time, and taking a long annual relaxation in a genial climate. He tells us that five-and-twenty years devoted to a laborious profession, and the harassing cares which pursue a hard-worked London physician, broke down his vital powers. In 1859, he became consumptive, and strove in vain to arrest the progress of disease. The choice was either retirement, with the faint hope of restoration to health, or within twelve months Kensal Green Cemetery. He chose wisely to relinquish a large and lucrative practice, and to take the chance of benefiting by a residence in a climate suited to his special condition. His book may be described as an exhaustive research in quest of such southern climates as may be best adapted to the assuagement of certain bodily complaints, including general debility. He describes his visits to various parts of France, Italy, and Spain, bordering on the Mediterranean, to Corsica, Sicily, and also to Algeria; his narrative being everywhere interspersed with such a variety of anecdote and adventure, as well as of remarks on the vegetation, natural history, and geography of the countries visited, as gives it an interest to the general reader.