348 Notes of the Month on [MARCH, 



A SIGN OP TUB TIMES,- We find one of the most important " signs" 

 in a statement in the Examiner that the sale of Mr. Bentham's works 

 during the last twelvemonth was three times greater than in any pre- 

 ceding year. When we consider the good that Mr. Bentham's views 

 cannot fail of disseminating, we hail this fact as a happy omen, and we 

 hope that the multiplying principle may go on as it has begun. It were 

 worth something to have been present at the dinner given by Mr. Ben- 

 thara to Talleyrand the other clay the guest nearly eighty, and the host 

 almost ninety. What events must they not have talked over, and what 

 probabilities discussed ! How bright must appear the solid lustre hourly 

 gathering round the cause of freedom, compared with the false brilliancy 

 of the past ! How fast is the meteor of toryism fading, before the glowing 

 daybreak of moral hope, and political regeneration ! 



MORTALITY IN THE REIGN OF WILLIAM IV. It appears that we 

 have small need of cholera to help us off with our surplus population. 

 A new rate of mortality seems to have come in with a new monarch ; 

 and people begin to die at the very moment that they might have seen 

 something worth living for. Since the accession of King William not 

 less, we are told, than twenty-four generals and twenty-six admirals, have 

 found their way into Westminster Abbey, or elsewhere. Considering that 

 his Majesty continues to receive the most friendly assurances from all 

 foreign powers, this attack upon the army and navy-list is rather pro- 

 digious. Napoleon himself could scarcely have made greater gaps in 

 the United Service Club in the time. To be sure they were not all 

 Nelsons and Marlboroughs, or we should have marked them as they 

 dropped off; whereas one can hardly name five, of the fifty great war- 

 riors. But a much wider destruction than this has been going on. We 

 could count up at least two hundred and fifty place-holders, and perhaps 

 four times that number of place-hunters, that have perished since the 

 death of the fourth George. The class of persons called tories drop off 

 like flies in the autumn ; the seeds of consumption are within them. 

 Tailors, architects, and gilders, die hourly of broken hearts ; and mor- 

 tality is spreading through every channel of heedless waste and pampered 

 luxury, from one end of the empire to the other. Such are a few of the 

 fatal events that follow the footsteps of a patriot king ! 



THE GALLERY OP THE OPERA. We have just had occasion to notice 

 one sign of the times, and here comes another in the announcement that 

 it is in contemplation to reduce the price of admission to the gallery of 

 the Opera. The terms to the boxes and pit are to continue as they are ; 

 not a dowager will squeeze herself into a box at less than the usual price 

 for exhibiting her diamonds and daughters; not a viscount, however 

 beggared he may be at Crockford's, will have a chance of edging into 

 the pit upon a reduced scale of expense ; but your middle classes will 

 be allowed a discount of twenty per cent, at least they are to have 

 elegant enjoyments upon their own terms ; and the pleasure in the 

 course of time, probably, of seeing the various illustrious scions of aris- 

 tocracy, walking one by one up the gallery stairs, from inability to pay 

 for the pit. What revolutions are in store for the rising generation ! 



DEATHS IN FEBRUARY 1832. February, though the shortest of the 

 months, has this year been remarkable for the unusual number of deaths 



