serving the crews in working order, still common humanity would surely furnish so simple and inexpensive a preventive, but for want of thought-thought which the proposed medical officers might suggest.

But not only is a 'medical certificate of the cause of death,' such as the law demands when men die on land, essential to sailors; the Registrar-General of Seamen should have the assistance of a medical officer to evaluate, tabulate, and report upon these mortality certificates. The Registrar-General of England has such aid. The Admiralty have such an officer; and since the publication of his annual reports, which began in 1856, naval men have made sanitary science a study, with the result that the death-rate has been diminished in the Royal Navy within that period more than one-half. The Medical Director-General's annual criticisms have been taken to heart in the Queen's service with that most noteworthy result in only seventeen years. As to the expense attending the granting and tabulating medical certificates of the cause of death, it must be remembered that during the nineteen years 1852-70 the balance of unclaimed wages of deceased merchant seamen handed over to the National Exchequer amounted to 154,743, or an average of about 8,144l. per annum. Is it too much to ask that this sum might be applied to the reduction of mortality from disease, &c., at sea in this way?

It is, however, in the deaths by violence that the absence of all inquiry as to whoe killed him, and unto whome the ship did belong,' affects the death-rate of the two sea services most conspicuously. Omit ting from consideration murders, suicides, and 'unknown causes' of death, and applying the ratio of mortality from other violent causes which obtains in the Royal Navy

(exclusive of gun-shot wounds) to the mercantile marine, there ought not to have been more than 411 deaths from violence in that service during either of the years 1869-70-71. There were then 2,528 lives annually lost by violence in excess of what would have been the case had the ratio per thousand men employed been the same as in the Queen's service. Is it not highly important, then, that some legal steps should be taken to ascertain whoe killed' these 2,528 extra persons, 'and unto whome the ships did belong'? Even if we strike off the 1,600 lost by shipwreck, which we have already discussed, there remains 1,339 persons drowned or killed on shipboard other than by wreck, without legal investigation.

Why should not the local coroner at the port of discharge include deceased seamen who had belonged to the ships paying off there, under his legal charge? And if the coroner be unable to attend at the shipping office on the day of discharge, whilst all the crew are assembled for the last time, let the proposed medical registrar of the port act as deputy coroner on such occasions. Then, if a verdict of manslaughter be returned against the shipowner, charterer, officers, seamen, or others, let the Solicitor of the Treasury or the Attorney-General intervene, as they do when idle young men scandalise public morals by putting on female clothing, when a prostitute is found dead in her bed, or when a claimant for title and property turns up from Australia, and on like occasions affecting landsmen.

The only legal difficulty appears to be a technical one, which legislation should overcome, viz. the absence of the body. Let evidence of the death be accepted, instead of the corpus delicti. 1,339 deaths by violence, other than shipwreck, annually occur on the high seas unquestioned. Surely, a coroner might. stop some of these, and reduce them

more nearly to the ratio of the Royal Navy.

To sum up: the legal protections for life at sea ought to be simply those accorded to life on land. Let (1st) the medical certificate of the cause of death, (2nd) the coroner's inquest, and (3rd) the common law of the land be extended to seamen and others dying under the ægis of the British flag at sea. Repeal all legislation which hampers the action of the common law as it affects life at sea, and adopt such legislative measures as will restore and assist the action of the common law. Amongst the assistances the assistances which the common law might require as regards shipwreck are undoubtedly some such measures as those indicated by Mr. Plimsoll in his most patriotic, humane, and courageous Appeal. Maximum and minimum loadlines should be conspicuously marked on ships when their registered tonnage is determined. The draught of water on leaving port should be noted by the Customs officials, and entered in the 'official log.' And a limited survey of the hull, such as Lloyd's surveyors exercise over two-fifths of the mercantile marine, might be enforced, provided the certificate be regarded as only negative in character, and as not releasing the owner from one iota of the legal responsibility under which he should be placed as to the safe condition of the ship, its equipment, cargo, stowage, and manning, should life be jeopardised or lost. These and such like measures should be adopted only in so far as they might assist justice in determining the degree of guilt of the owner or charterer, should life be hazarded. It is legal responsibility for manslaughter, &c., in case of loss of life, on the part of the proprietor of the ship, with its attendant penalties, to be decided in the ordinary courts of law, and under the common law of the land, that is chiefly needed.

Marine insurance takes away all

pecuniary incentives to the preservation of property and life. The common law restored to the sea will alone supply what marine insurance takes away. 'At the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man,' is practically the law of the land; let it also be the law of the sea. The urgent necessity for this is shown by the fact that the ratio of mortality in the mercantile marine is at least three times higher than in the Queen's service, and of deaths by acknowledged violence six times higher; whilst the ratio of total shipwreck is at least five times greater than in the Royal Navy.

It is to be regretted that the Royal Commission appears to be precluded, by the terms of reference, from inquiring into the whole mortality at sea; but as the whole of the desired information exists within the Board of Trade, nothing but political exigencies prevents life at sea being placed under similar legal protection to that accorded to life on land. The shipping interest' does not include the 196,000 voteless seamen. And unrepresented

maritime labour stands no chance against powerful and well-represented sea capital in the Houses of Parliament. The voting portion of the shipping interest will no doubt oppose Mr. Plimsoll's noble efforts to the utmost. They will prosecute him and persecute him; but most of the respectable shipowners thoroughly appreciate his invaluable exertions. Yet, strange to say, few of those who thus sympathise with Mr. Plimsoll have the boldness to come forward to support or lead the movement with which that gentleman is identified. This is, however, in keeping with all similar movements in which labour has sought and obtained protection from over-greedy capitalists. The help has almost invariably come from outside the particular interest affected. The Miners Acts, the

Factory Acts, &c., were all carried by philanthropists with little public aid, even where they received much private sympathy from employers. We must not, then, be surprised if respectable shipowners do their sympathy in private, and doubtful ones engage in active and open opposition. The attitude of the Board of Trade is far more perplexing. We have the Marine Secretary, in his pamphlet on Shipwrecks, outdoing Mr. Plimsoll in the severity of his denunciations against 'villany, fraud, and murder;' yet the Board (which is a phantom body) treats Mr. Plimsoll as enemy, impedes his inquiries, and throws every obstacle in the way of immediate and effective legislation. Nothing is to be hoped for by

an

seamen of fair play and common justice in matters of life and death, otherwise than by forcibly extorting it from unwilling 'shipping' or voting interests, from apparently unwilling political officials, and from an unwilling Legislature. This is what Mr. Plimsoll has undertaken to do on their behalf. Without the united aid of public opinion he cannot overcome these opposing forces; and there is great danger lest the present effervescence of public feeling be allowed to subside, without their lives being placed under similar legal protection to that enjoyed by every other inhabitant of these islands. This legal equality is all that is wanted. Seamen claim no more, they deserve no less.

N the hopeful May-time, when the

the green leaves coming again, just this time thirteen years, I wrote an essay Concerning Growing Old in this magazine. That essay found favour, possibly because it deserved it; possibly because it did not: but that is neither here nor there. It gave the views of its subject which had then been reached: and, writing it, it seemed to its writer that he was able to look away backwards towards an illimitable horizon, and in fact that he was very old. 'I am very old, I am forty,' said Mr. Buckle on his birthday. Doubtless that remarkable man meant what he said, and spoke without any degree of affectation. When that essay was written, the writer wanted a good deal of being Half-Way: yet Mr. Buckle's notion was quite honestly entertained. Looking back now, it seems different: as many things seem. He was young then: young comparatively. Mr. Dickens made mention of Tom Pinch, as ‘a respectable young man, aged thirtyfive.' A fortiori must he be young, who was considerably less. Yet did he presume to treat, not with out sincere feeling, of a matter imperfectly understood.

Let the subject of that departed May be recurred to. There is something to be said about it, learned through the experience of these thirteen years. Much has come and gone, much has been learned, in that long time. It seems now as though no one could really feel old, if both his father and mother were still living: hale, active, enjoying society and life. Still abides the old Home whence the household were scattered. You are still one of 'the boys:' and in any perplexity you know where to go for counsel, always kind and sincere. But when they go, you stand in the front rank, with no

preceding generation between you

great makes

great difference, many know. May I recall that time, May in

the

year of grace 1860 ? It comes back, without recalling, to-night, very vividly. For to-day there came an afternoon of leisure, coming amid busy days: and after two miles' walk over a dusty and shadeless road, whence, looking back, you saw dark towers and ruins and the environing sea, you might turn into a little wooded dell, down which murmurs a brook under green trees: and under the trees there blazed everywhere such thick tufts of great primroses as may seldom be scen: beautiful to look upon, and with the faint but powerful fragrance which recalls earliest days. Doubtless it has been with many, that primroses were the first remembered flowers. Among many Mays, these leaves and flowers brought back vividly that which has been named, wherein that old essay was written in scraps of time amid hard work now traceless. It was packed up, and sent away by post from Athens to Babylon, like others innumerable. For the dog had his day, and a very cheering day. And, lest vanity should obscure the fact, several kind friends were prompt to inform him when it began to go over. Then, a few days later, through the summer night with its brief darkness, he journeyed in the flying train to the great city: met once more (it was the last time) the dear old face of the friend who was then in charge of Fraser; and corrected his proof, not in the green light of leaves in the distant country, but in the hearing of the unceasing roar of the Strand; looking down with awe on that awful tide of life: thinking How can an ignorant dweller amid trees and hedges, sheep and oxen,

where only small events ever occur, have anything to say worth being heard by wise and polished men and women strung and refined by the ceaseless brightening and sharpening of London? Then, in days just like these now present, under John Parker's roof, the writer beheld for the first time many eminent and famous men, long known, and long beloved (some of them) through books which had cheered and stimulated and informed. How clever they were: how much they knew: how pleasant and kind a set it was which had those head-quarters! It was all fresh and wonderful. And happily for himself, the writer lives so far out of the busy world, and goes to it so seldom, that in great measure it remains as fresh and wonderful yet.

By Growing Old I now understand reaching a point midway between forty and fifty; not without a tendency to get nearer the latter age, once hardly imaginable as a personal reality. And when one has in this grave sense grown old, is there any fact which is more pressed upon one than this: that there is such a long look-back now? The prospect stretches far. Memory is still keen and retentive: the distant prospect has not faded into mistiness: and as you go on, and now and then turn to look back, there is just so much added to the view. Önce, it was wonderful to hear a man talk of what he had done twenty years ago; still more, of what had happened thirty years ago: it seemed a vast stretch of time, possible indeed in the experience of others, but inconceivable in one's own. For every human being is like Sidney's shepherd-boy in this, that he fails to take in that he will ever grow old. It seems yesterday since the writer, reading for the Bar (how much English law lost in him!) diligently frequented Westminster Hall and the Guild

It is

hall: and seeing vigorous barristers roaring away to common juries, or going on with a cross-examination in which every question began with the sharp and minacious Now Sir; listened with wonder to the assurance that the vigorous barrister had worn a wig and gown for five-andtwenty years, or five-and-thirty. Surely he ought to be dead long ago. That was the reflection then. different now. It has been discovered that time passes away, to the amount of twenty years or more; but that it is really a very short while; and it leaves the human being not so much changed; still with the old likings, hopes, and wishes; still with the old weaknesses and faults; still the same man, Furthermore, as years accumulate behind one, so does work. You have done such a deal. It mounts up into something awful to think of. And this, though very much of the work done leaves no permanent trace, but just suffices to do what is required by the day: and to keep the machinery going. You have written fourteen letters this morning; you have visited eighteen sick folk this afternoon. It had all to be done. Had you not done it, you would have been miserable in the sense of duty neglected. But there is nothing to show for it. It is not like the abiding pages of inestimable theology, or mild morality, which, being written, you lay up in a box: the abiding memorial of past labour. It frightened one, in the old days, to hear men in advanced life speak of the work they had done. I remember the sense of awe with which I heard a clergyman of about sixty years, mention (with no air of recording an exploit) that he had at one period of his life written a hundred and fifty lectures on St. Luke's Gospel. I gazed upon him with the feeling, And are you there living to tell it? Knowing the work implied in writing even one sermon