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VARIETIES.

COMPARATIVE LONGEVITY.-Herr Max Waldstein, of the Statistical Department at Vienna, has published a pamphlet giving some curious statistics as to the ages of the inhabitants of Austria and other parts of Europe. He says

that the number of people in Europe who are upward of ninety years old is 102,831, of whom 60,303 are women. Of those who are over a hundred years of age there are 241 women and 161 men in Italy, 229 women and 183 men in Austria, and 526 women and 524 men in Hungary. There are in Austria 1,508,359 persons over sixty years of age, comprising 7.5 per cent. of the whole population. It is found that the percentage of old people is much higher among the Germans than among the Slavs. In the German provinces of Upper Austria and Salzburg it is 11.5, while in Galicia it is only 4. In Hungary there are more old men than old women, which is explained by the fact that the excess of women over men is less in Hungary than in other countries. According to Herr Waldstein, there are in Austria 100 women and 86 men who are a hundred years old, 41 women and 37 men who are one hundred and one, and 88 women and 60 men who are upward of one hundred and one years of age.

THEATRES IN JAPAN.--With the Japanese, as with the ancient Greeks, the performance of a play is the matter of a whole day, the theatre opening at about six in the morning and closing at dusk. This is broken by frequent and tedious intervals between the acts, when the audience adjourn to the tea-houses, or take their meals in the theatre. In case of a play being prolonged till after dark, a miserably inefficient light is obtained by a row of candles placed in front of the stage; besides which a candle fixed to a rod is carried about by an attendant, and held in front of the particular actor who is speaking, in order better to illuminate him. Another peculiarity is the presence on the stage of sundry boys dressed in black, with loose black caps, indicating that they are to be supposed invisible. They

said to hold the same comparison with our modern European drama as medieval decorative painting does with the highly naturalistic picture of to-day. The story is told forcibly; the action of body and of feature is what we should call exaggerated; the impression of sorrow or despair is aided by weird doleful music, and by the sympathetic wailing of the chorus; and sometimes acute feminine grief is pictured by a dance, in which the hands are wrung and the body writhes in painful action, accompanied by sobs and snatches of wild song.— Builder.

COLD FEET AND SLEEPLESSNESS.-The association betwixt cold feet and sleeplessness is much closer than is commonly imagined. Persons with cold feet rarely sleep well, especially women. Yet, the number of persons so troubled is very considerable. We now know that, if the blood-supply of the brain be kept up, sleep is impossible. An old theologian, when weary and sleepy with much writing, found that he could keep his brain active by immersing his feet in cold water: the cold drove the blood from the feet to the head. Now, what this old gentleman accomplished by design, is secured for many persons much against their will. Cold feet are the bane of many women. Light boots keep up a blood. less condition of the feet in the day, and in many women there is no subsequent dilatation of the blood-vessels when the boots are taken off. These women come in from a walk, and put their feet to the fire to warm-the most effective plan of cultivating chilblains. At night, they put their feet to the fire, and have a hot bottle in bed. But it is all of no use; their feet still remain cold. How to get their feet warm is the great question of life with them-in cold weather. The effective plan is not very attractive at first sight to many minds. It consists in first driving the blood-vessels into firm contraction, after which secondary dilatation follows. See the snowballer's hands! The first contact with the snow makes the hands terribly cold; for the small arteries are driven thereby into firm contraction, and the nerve-endings of the finger-tips feel the low temperature very keenly. But, as the snowballer perseveres, his hands commence to glow; the blood-vessels have become secondarily dilated, and the rush of warm arterial blood is felt agreeably by the peripheral nerve-end

crouch about behind the actors to remove from the stage any thing that is to be dispensed with, or to place a low seat or support under an actor who has to take up a position for any length of time. Most of the plays enacted are taken from Japanese history, and a visit to the theatre is now the best opportunity of realizings. This is the plan to adopt with cold feet. ing the customs, habits, etiquette, and costumes of ancient times. It is said that the representations may be relied upon as correct. With the profession of an actor, as with other professions in this country, the business has hitherto been hereditary, and instruction has been personally given or handed down in manuscript. The dramatic art of Japan may be

They should be dipped in cold water for a brief period; often just to immerse them, and no more, is sufficient; and then they should be rubbed with a pair of hair flesh-gloves, or a rough Turkish towel, till they glow, immediately before getting into bed. After this a hotwater bottle will be successful enough in maintaining the temperature of the feet, though

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Disagreeable as the plan at first sight may appear, it is efficient; and those who have once fairly tried it continue it, and find that they have put an end to their bad nights and cold feet. Pills, potions, lozenges, 'night-caps," all narcotics, fail to enable the sufferer to woo sleep successfully get rid of the cold feet, and then sleep will come of itself.-British Medical Journal.

WALL-FLOWERS.
WHERE the wall-flowers grow,
Many come and go;

Rich and poor men pass,
Lover, too, and lass;
Children at their play,
Heads careworn and gray.
Nought of all that go
Do the wall-flowers know;
Yet their perfumes reach
To the heart of each,-
Win one moment's share
In each passer there.
Droop thy head, and go,
Poet, from the show;
Man thou art, not flower,
Decade liv'st, not hour,
Reason hast, and will,
Sympathy and skill.

Yet what canst thou know.
More of all that go?
Could thy verse but reach
To the heart of each,

As the wall-flowers' scent,
What were thy content!

F. W. B.

ARTISTIC ROME IN THE EIGHTEENTH CEN

TURY.—In the eighteenth century, as in the sixteenth, Rome was sterile of arts and artists, but it was once more the market to which were brought the productions of other provinces. As the town of Italy where men of all nationalities had most met, where every period of history had left the greatest trace, where every one found most to suit his taste-as the huge centre of eclecticism-Rome was at once unable to produce any thing herself and able to absorb all that was produced elsewhere; for great works of art are born of a single locality and a single period, are destined for the whole world and all time. A hundred years ago Rome was a musical centre; it alone had preserved the music of the sixteenth century as a sort of relic, and the living music of the eighteenth was poured into it on all sides. The nobles, ignorant and pedantic, were as infatuated for musicians as they had been forty years before for writers, with the addition that the former were tidier, better-mannered folk than the latter. The princes of the Church, immensely ostentatious, thought fit to collect and keep singers (when obtained cheap) as well as antiques; perhaps they could no longer afford to keep private chapels as a hundred years before, when Milton and Evelyn were at Rome; but they had numbers of musical protégés, whom they flattered with dinners, for whom they intrigued

with foreign theatre directors, as the great Alessandro Albani disdained not to do, and by whose means they could get up sacred, though tolerably profane, operas in their palaces, as Metastasio's godfather Ottoboni did at the Cancelleria. The smaller priesthood hunted about everywhere for poor and modest young men of talent, who composed oratorios and masses for their shabby little churches and schools. The middle classes, an easy-going, independent, rather indolent set, with the intelligence, cynicism, and good humor of Pasquino, were so many born critics; the opinion of shopkeepers and shopkeepers' wives, who heard music from morning till night, was important; that of doctors, lawyers, and secular priests paramount. The enormous class of indescribable half-lay, halfecclesiastical creatures, poor, witty, disreputable, called abati, adventurers, scholars, poetasters, filled the pits of the theatres, where they reigned supreme; they, in their rusty black cloaks and horse-hair wigs, bearding the scarlet-robed cardinals and be-ribboned grandees in the boxes. For they were a most intelligent and pugnacious lot; quick at epigram and pasquinade, always ready with smart sayings, sonnets, and unripe apples, wherewith to express their several states of mind. Behind these youngsters were the graver wearers of black-physicians, jurists, chaplains and secretaries, respectable old gentlemen who had published unread treatises on the music of the ancients, on the opera, etc; slow and reserved in judgment, inquisitorial and paternal. These two classes supplied the total abstinence of musical journalism; their disputes at coffeehouses, their disquisitions in drawing-rooms, constituted the æsthetical life of the people.Fraser's Magazine.

YOU'LL NEVER GUESS.

BY FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

I KNOW two eyes, two soft brown eyes,
Two eyes as sweet and dear

As ever danced with gay surprise,
Or melted with a tear;

In whose fair rays a heart may bask-
Their shadowed rays serene-
But, little maid, you must not ask
Whose gentle eyes I mean.

I know a voice of fairy tone,
Like brooklet in the June,
That sings to please itself alone,
A little old-world tune:

Whose music haunts the listener's ear,
And will not leave it free;
But I shall never tell you, dear,
Whose accents they may be.

I know a golden-hearted maid
For whom I built a shrine,
A leafy nook of murmurous shade,
Deep in this heart of mine;
And in that calm and cool recess
To make her home she came-
But, oh! you'd never, never guess
That little maiden's name.-Good Words.

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