The Sun.
London, England, 1864-07-13 00:00:00

HEALTH OF LONDON.

(From the Registrar-General's Report.)
IThe deaths in London in the week that ended
last Satufday were 1,268. The number returned
have varied little during the last five weeks,
1,262 having been the lowest in that period,
and 1,297 the highest. The average number
for the 27th week of ton years 1854.63 is, with a
correction tar increase of population, 1,172. The
actual result of last week is therefore in excess of
the estimated number by nearly 100 deaths.
DiarrlT ce i continues to increase slowly, and it was
returned last week in 81 cases, Seventy-nine deaths
from measles were registered. This disease exhibits
a mortality double the average, but its weekly num-
ber is not higher now than it was after it obtained
a sudden increase in the middle of May. It is not a
favourable sign of the sanitary condition of the
eastern division of the metropolis that it returned
more deaths from measles than any other division,
also more from whooping-cough, typhus, and diar-
rhoea. There were seven from measles in Mile-end
Old-town. Of six deaths in the Old-street sub •dis-
trict of St. Luke four were from measles, one from
diptheria, and one from fever. Of eight deaths in
Haggerstone East six were from zymotic diseases.
A man died from " thrombi of the femoral veins
(seven days), oelema of the lungs (eight days)."
In the Cambridge road, Bethnal-green, on the 2d
inst. a greengrocer, aged 64 years, died of" cholera
Asiatica (five days), following consecutive fever."
Last week the births of 967 boys and 900 girls, in
all 1,876 children, were registered in London. In
the ten corresponding weeks of the years 1854-63
the average number, corrected, was 1,782.
At the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, the mean
height of the barometer in the week was 29 88in.
On Sunday the reading was 29.47 in, and rose to
30.02 in on Wednesday. The mean temperature of
the air in the week was 56.5 deg., which is 5.1 deg.
below the average of the same week in 43 years (as
determined by Mr Glaisher). The mean daily tempe-
rature was below the average throughout the week.
The highest day temperature was 74.1 deg. on Tues-
day. The lowest night temperature was 45.8 deg, on
Friday. The range of temperature in the week was
therefore 28.3 deg. The mean daily range was 20.8
deg. The difference between the mean dew-point
and air was 9 deg. The mean degree of hu-
midity of the air was 72, complete saturation being
represented by 100. The wind was
in the south-
west on the first two days', then in the north-west,
and afterwards in the north-east. The amount of
rain was 0.13 in., which fell on Sunday, accompa-
nied with thunder.

The deaths in Vienna, as returned by Dr Glatter,
were 338 and 345 in the weeks ending the 25th of
June and the 2d of July, when the mean tempera-
tures were 66.2 deg, and 67.9 deg. respectively,
those at Greenwich having been 68.5 deg. and 571
deg.

In the thirteen weeks that ended the 2d of July
the mortality in London was high ; the deaths were
17,316, In the three corresponding quarters of
1860-62 they ranged from about
15,000 to nearly
16,000; in the same quarter of last year they were
17,417. The mean temperature of the air was 53.5
deg., which is the same as it was in the correspond-
ing period of 1862, but higher than in any other
spring of 1860 3.

There were 2,798 deaths from diseases of the re-
spiratory organs, a higher number than occurred in
any spring quarter of the four previous years. The
mortality from zymotic diseases was also high ;
included 4,325 deaths, of which 116 were from
smallpox, 844 from measles, 593 from scarlatina,
143 from diptheria, 198 from croup, 639 from
whooping-cough, 783 from typhus, 321 from diar.
alma. Measles was the most fatal epidemic disease
of the season, and next to it typhus. Measles pre-
vailed chiefly in the east district; it carried off 58
children in the district of Shoreditch, 55 in E2thnal-
green, 37 in Whitechapel, 61 in St. George's-in-the
1
East, 22 in Stepney, 43 in Mile-end Old-town, and
3in Poplar. This disease was also very fatal in
Gray's-inn.lane sub district, in Islington, Hackney,
and St. Andrew Eastern, Holborn.
Of 616 violent deaths 510 were by accident or
negligence, 30 by homicide, 75 by suicide, and one
by public execution,

Of 2,919 deaths in public institutions, 1,556
were in workhouses, 34 in prisons, 75 in military
and naval asylums, 1,181 hospitals, and 74 in lu.
natic asylums.

FATAL ACCIDENT.—At an inquest held on Mon-
day in Abbey-road, St. John's-wood, a verdict of Acci-
dental Death was returned in the case of a man named
Charles Taunton, a publican, who died from the effects 01
injuries sustained by being thrown out a cart on Friday
evening in the above-named road,

LITERATURE,

Hard Cash, By Charles Reade. Three Vols.
Second Edition. Sampson Low, Son, and Co.
The marvel to us is not that this should be the
second edition of " Herd Cash," but that it should
not be the twenty-second. The novelist from whose
hand, as yet, we take it to be the masterpiece, as-
sumes high rank, if not the highest rank, among
the greatest word-painters living. He is, accord-
ing to our estimate of his powers—and let us pre-
mise that Charles Reade is known to us alone
through his books—according to our estimate of his
powers, he is beyond any question at all the
Realistic Romancist, Lot only of his age but
of our literature. His huge medice sal fiction
we put aside altogether from among hie works as
a thing apart. It is nothing better in our eyes
than an extravagant hallucination. It has none of
oar sympathy. It is alien to us altogether. But
with regard to his other writings—well, Charles
Reade in his character as a fictionist, like the
ancient mariner in the ballad of Coleridge, " holds
us with his glittering eye," and " hath his will"
with us completely. "Peg Woffington "we could
read any number of times—as, be it said, any num-
ber of times we could sit and watch the unravelment
of its plot in its charming dramatised form as "Masks
and Faces" at the Adelphi—partionlarly with
that consummate artist Benjamin Webster, com-
manding our tears by every tremulous intonation
of his voice, by every subtle movement of the
nerves of his emotional countenance as Triplet.
" Christie Johnstone," again, is a bit of• breezy,
briny sea coast life, as true to the reality as any
radiant picture ever touched to view by the brush
of Mr. Hook, the Royal Academician. " Never
Too Late To Mend," however, the famous
convict story of several years back, and
now again this still more wonderfully elabo-
rated narrative of " Hard Cash"—the the Very
Hard Cash of All the 1: ear Round massed together
from its weekly instalments into three handsome
and substantial volumes—reveal the distinguishing
peculiarities of the genius of Charles Reade at their
very best and at their very highest. Lie root idea, or
innermost set purpose, of each of these two remark-
able works one can't by any possibility but recog-
nise while reading them, and afterwards, no matter
how long afterwards, while looking back at them
in recollection, as‘not simply full of discomfort, but
absolutely repellant and repulsive to the utmost
possible degree. Yet, out of these unattractive
materiels, in each instance the genius of the writer
conjures up a figment enthralling to the extent of
absolute fascination. It signifies nothing compara-
tively, through all our shuddering disgust—that in
one instance we have to live and breathe and
move, as it were, steeped to the vary lips
in all the horrors of felon-life— that in
the other instance, in this latest instance, we are
pent up, as it were, during an unconscionable period,
in the midst of the yet ghastlier horrors of a very
labyrinth of mad-houses! We read on—enthralled !
We remember—when we have done reading the
story as it is here related to us—we remember the
incidents and the people it has been the means of
introducing to our notice, as though these recollees
times it has left behind it, were the results of our
own personal experiences. We doubt very much
whether any writer in our tongue, even Daniel
Defoe, ever more completely bleat and amalga-
mated—romance and matter-of-fact. There are
descriptions in " Hard Cash" as fine in their
way as anything that can be named in the whole
range of our imaginative literature. There are sea
chapters as masterly as the very best that could be
adduced from Michael Scott or from Fenimore
Cooper. The acconnt of Captain David Dodd's
working of the Agra, East Indiamaie—the descrip-
tion of his bloody conflict with the Pirates—the
record of the rise and progress, and stupendous de-
velopment, and overwhelming outbreak of the
Storm—the awful limning at last of the
direst incidents of the Wreck—are worthy
of any . one, are
.worthy, in other words,
of Charles Reade at his very best as the great
English Realistic Romancist. As a mere specimen
of his quality as a word painter, however, let us
draw nearer home than the great deep far away
yonder in those Eastern seas—let us take a more
everyday occurrence as the theme descanted upon
ey his pen of glamour and fascination. Perhaps
nothing better in its way as an exemplar of our
novelist's marvellously vivid capacity for descrip-
tion, could be adduced than his word painting as
follows of—