rate of twelve thousand per hour. It was, however, the fiscal restriction imposed upon the press that retarded its progress. We have looked carefully over a copy of the Times for the 1st of January, 1824,* a small sheet of four pages only, and have arrived at the conclusion that for that one day's issue its proprietors paid no less a şum than 1817. in taxes to the State. No mitigation of these laws took place until 1836, when the advertisement duty, the compulsory stamp, and the paper duty were all reduced. The prosperity of the daily papers, of course, dates from that time.

in the United

"In 1824, there were published in the United Newspapers Kingdom, 266 papers in all, thus divided: "Kingdom. London, 31; in the country, 135; in Ireland, 58; in Scotland, 33; in the British Islands, 9. In the present year the aggregate number is 1,585. Estimating the news sheets printed in 1824, we cannot place the number at more than thirty millions of sheets. At the present period,

we do not doubt that the issue is six hundred and fifty millions of sheets per annum.

"The Post-Office Directory for the year 1824 gives the names of 136 master printers in London. The present year's Directory gives the names of 777.

* It was at the beginning of this year Mr. Francis was apprenticed at Marlborough's.

Public libraries of London.

"We subjoin the list of daily papers, morning and evening, published in 1824. The curious in such matters should examine the list of weekly papers issued in London at that period, and also the lists including the country papers, and for Ireland, Scotland, and the British Islands.

"Daily.-British Press, Chronicle, Post, Herald, Morning Advertiser, Public Ledger, Times, New Times.

"Daily Evening.-British Traveller, Courier, Globe and Traveller, Star, Statesman, Sun.”

The first of a series of articles on "The Public Libraries of London" appears on September 26th, the library of Sion College being taken first, followed by that of Lambeth Palace on October 17th and 31st, and Dr. Williams's on the 26th of December.

When in 1852 Messrs. Griffin & Co. became proprietors of the 'Encyclopædia Metropolitana,’ they commenced an issue of the most important articles in smaller volumes than the quarto ones in which this extensive work originally Phillips on appeared. Among these was 'Metallurgy,' by metallurgy. J. Arthur Phillips. The Athenæum of October 3rd, 1874, thus refers to this work: "The book was the first treatise on metallurgy proper published in this kingdom, although England had long been the most important mining and

metallurgical country in the world. It therefore attracted considerable attention, and three editions were published before 1858. Since that time, Dr. Percy's comprehensive volumes on the Metallurgies of Copper, Zinc, Lead, and Iron, have appeared. Several works have been translated from the French and German, and some useful manuals, on the smelting processes of special metals, have been written; but no well-illustrated treatise, in a single volume, describing with any detail the metallurgical operations relating to the principal metals, has been published." Then, in reviewing Mr. Phillips's 'Elements of Metallurgy,' it is said: "The wish for such a volume has been repeatedly expressed, and it is to supply that want that the present 'Elements of Metallurgy' has been produced. It must not be regarded as a new edition of the author's 'Metallurgy.' It is

metals obtained in

an entirely new book." Mr. Phillips states that Quantities of in 1872 the following quantities of metals were obtained in the British Isles:

Tons.

£.

Pig Iron......... 6,741,929, valued at 18,540,304

1872.

Bryan Waller
Procter.

Of coal we raised 123,497,316 tons, of the value of 46,311,1437, and the earthy minerals were valued at 1,811,826. The total value of metals and minerals was 70,190,916.

The death of Bryan Waller Procter, “Barry Cornwall," at the age of eighty-five, is noticed on the 10th of October. "As a poet, he perhaps will live as long by his lyrics as by any of his works. The Sea! the Sea!''King Death' (a poem almost, rather than a song); the joyous 'Best of all good company,' and such perfect ballads as the 'Song to Twilight,' and that more "The Nights.' exquisite one still, The Nights,' will be sung for many a long year after Barry Cornwall's other productions will be only on the shelves of the curious in rare books. The last stanza of 'The Nights' is now appropriate to himself:Oh, the Night brings sleep

To the green woods deep;

To the bird of the woods, its nest.

To care, soft hours;

To life, new powers;

To the sick and the weary,-Rest!

Among the most favourable specimens of Procter's prose writings may be mentioned his sympathetic life of Edmund Kean, and his last work (1866), his simple and touching biography of Charles Lamb. This book, written in the author's seventy seventh year, shows that, whatever age a man may be, the pure human

heart is for ever young......In Mr. Procter we have lost one of the last of those who wrote in the Athenæum, when we numbered among the contributors to our columns Charles Lamb, Landor, Miss Barrett (Mrs. Barrett Browning), Hood, Jerrold, Allan Cunningham, Leigh Hunt, Sheridan Knowles, the CornLaw Rhymer, the Ettrick Shepherd, &c. Mr. Carlyle, Mrs. Norton, and Mrs. Howitt are among the few still surviving of our contributors of that day."

On the 17th of October it is stated that "Col. P. Egerton Warburton, the Australian explorer, whose wonderful expedition from the centre of Australia to the West Coast, accomplished by him and his party under difficulties and privations of a most appalling character, was rewarded with the gold medal of the Geographical Society, is now in London." Col. Warburton published an account of his "journey across the Western Interior of Australia," Mr. Charles H. Eden writing an introduction, and Mr. H. W. Bates editing the journal. A review of this book appears in the Athenæum of the 8th of May, 1875. The expedition originated in the public spirit of two colonists, Messrs. Hughes and Elder, who most liberally defrayed its expenses.

"The Greville Memoirs: a Journal of the

Col. P. Egerton Warburton.