[Mr. Macculloch acknowledges himself indebted for this curious and instructive article to his esteemed friend “John M’Diarmid, Esq.  Editor of the Dumfries Courier, one of the best provincial papers published in the empire.”

By the way, what a colossal labour must have been the preparation of the above Dictionary.  How it reminds us of the words of poor, patient Antony Wood:  “What toyle hath been taken, as no man thinketh, so no man believeth, but he that hath made the trial.”  Yet it has often occurred to us that the compiler, or editor, as he is complimentarily called, is barely treated with proper respect in these days.  What is all knowledge but a continued accumulation and comparison of facts, by “following the example of time?” Yet, all this is not original; but we ask, in what does the intellectual originality of the present day consist? does it add a spark to the minds of men which they cannot find in the labours of past ages?  New books (we mean new original works) are like dull, pointless flints; the reader cannot scintillate, strike-fire, or steal from them; they are mere changes of words, often at the sacrifice of sense to sound.  A flashy novel would, perhaps, secure the writer more celebrity than Mr. Macculloch’s Dictionary will obtain for him, though his reputation for talent and industry want not the false glory, the common-place praise—­the dullest outpourings—­of a very dull perception.  Perhaps the whole series of the Waverley Novels might have been written while this Dictionary was in course of compilation.

We heartily wish that Mr. Macculloch’s work may become as popular as it deserves.  It will then enjoy extensive fame.  It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to acquaint the reader with its mass of well-arranged materials; its laborious abstracts, documents, and information upon every point that bears upon the main subjects, commerce and commercial navigation, practical, theoretical, and historical.  It deserves to be the library of every counting-house, manufactory, and workshop in the empire; it is, indeed, a delightful relief to mere figures, and we should think better of the man whom we caught dipping into its pages by turns with his book of accounts:  for, with Addison, we have no noble opinion of a man who is ever poring over his cash-book, and deriving all his ideas of happiness from its balances.]

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COMPARATIVE MORTALITY.

A curious official paper has been circulated, ordered by the House of Commons, showing the comparative mortality in many large towns, &c., of the kingdom, from 1813 up to the present year.  Among the towns included in this comparative calculation of mortality are, Leeds (town), Bradford, Holbeck, Beeston, Wigan, Preston, Norwich, Bolton-le-Moors, London, Bury, (Lancashire), Essex, &c.  The result of the investigation of