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THE CONTINUED EMIGRATION OF THE IRISH is one of the most remarkable points of contemporary history.  Subsequent to, or in consequence of, the great failure of the potato crop in 1846—­that calamity which revolutionized Ireland—­not less than a million of people must have left its shores to try their fortunes this side the Atlantic.  Between emigration and the ravages of famine and pestilence, we may calculate that the population of Ireland has diminished by at least a million and a half or two millions since the autumn of 1846.  How long the emigration will continue, it is, of course, impossible to predict, as every new settler in America who prospers, is the agent by which a fresh demand is made upon the old country.  It is one of the best features in the Irish character, that, in the new land to which they flock, they do not forget the friends or relatives that they have left behind them, and that every packet carries money from America for the relief of people in Ireland, or to pay their passage out to the forests or prairies of a world where there is elbow-room for all, and where a willing heart and a stout pair of hands are the surest passports to independence and a competency.

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DWARKANTH TAGORE was a marvelously intelligent man, greatly in advance of his countrymen—­a man who could discern the value of European civilization, and who devoted his energies and his means to the duty of grafting them on Hindu society.  His riches were, like all merchants’, in supposition.  He had argosies, and lands, and merchandise; but what with land rats and water rats, and mortgages, glutted markets, and competitions of all kinds, that which had an untellable value to-day, was at a discount to-morrow.  His influence in the southern provinces of India maintained the credit of his house while he lived; he died bequeathing no atom of his commanding spirit and exquisite tact, and the house which he had created, together with the Bank he had sustained, fell in the general commercial wreck which afflicted all Calcutta three years ago.  Thus much of admirable Dwarkanth Tagore.

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MADAME BOULANGER—­the Mrs. Glover of the Paris Opera Comique, has a Conspicuous place in the recent foreign obituaries.  The French, in their musical comedies, cherish dramatis personae of a maturity not known on any other musical stage, save among the background figures.  “So often as we think of the good lady in question, with hardly a note of voice left, but overflowing with quaint humor, and willingly turning her years and ill looks to the utmost account, with a readiness to be absurd, if the part needed, which even a Lablache could not outdo,—­so often as we recollect her Madame Barnek, in ‘L’Ambassadrice,’ and her La Bocchetta in ’Polichinelle, some of our most comic operatic impressions will be revived.  Madame Boulanger was buried in the church of Notre Dame.”