The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-10 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN.

Sir.,—As many of your readers may feel anxious
to know the result of the corn averages for the
seven years to Christmas, 1865, published by
authority in the London Gazette of this evening,

viz. :-

Wheat ss. 11/ per imperial bushel.
Barley 4s. 77
Oats
I beg to state for their information that the value
of each £lOO of tithe rent charge will for the year
1866 amount to £97 7s. 91d.

It appears from the following statement from my
" Annual Tithe Commutation Tables " that the
lowest average value of £lOO of tithe rent charge
during the 30 years which have elapsed since the
passing of the Tithe Commutation Act was in the
year 1855, viz., £B9 15s. 84d. ; and that from that
time up to the year 1861 the average gradually in-
creased £22 7s. Bd., or about 34 per cent. per
annum, up to £ll2 3s. 40., or the highest value
during the whole period. From 1861 the septen-
nial average value has been gradually receding in a
similar ratio.
For the Year £s. d. For the Year £s. d.
1837
1838 97 7 11 1853
1839 95 7 9 1854 9O 19 5
1840 9B 15 91. 1855
1841 lO2 12 54 1856
1842 lO5 8 24 1857
1843 lO5 12 24 1858
1844 lO4 3 51 1859
1845 lO3 17 11f 1860
1846 lO2 17 8f 1861
1817 99 18 104 1862
1848 lO2 1 0 1863
1849 lOO 3 if 1864 lO3 3 10/
1850 9B 16 10 1865 9B 15 10*
1851 96 11 41 1866

30 Years £3,026 9 41

General Average for 30 Years ... £lOO 17 7;
I am, Sir, yours, &c.,
CHARLES M. WILLICH,
Late Actuary, University Life Assurance
Society.
2, Montpelier-square, Rutland-gate, Jan. 9.

THE ART JOURNAL FOR JANUARY inaugurates this
New Year of grace, 1866, in a manner worthy of
its reputation. The two principal embellishments
are exquisitely beautiful—the one, Thomas Faed's
charming Scottish interior, " The Alitherless Bairn"
—the other, Monti's lovely " Sleep of Sorrow and
Dream of Joy." There is yet a third singularly
graceful engraving—illustrative of one of the great
Sir Walter's heroines, a sketch from the Waverley
Portrait Gallery, sweet Phoebe Mayflower, from
" Woodstock." Without any disparagement to
either Mr. Hamerton's Liber Memorialis, or Mr.
Ruskin's Cestus of Aglaia, the palm is still borne
off, among all the literary contributions to the
Art Journal, by its accomplished and indefatigable
Editor, Mr. S. C. Hall, who this month con-
tributes another of his attractive series of
biographical Recollections, entitled, " Memories
of the Authors of the Age ; or, Written Por-
traits (from Personal Acquaintance) of Great Men
and Women of the Epoch"—a delightful paper
on Robert Southey, some time Poet Laureate,
and in a very peculiar and pre-eminent manner
the Man-of-Letters of his generation. From this
very agreeable paper, recording Mr. S. C. Hall's
personal recollections of Robert Southey, we extract
the following anecdotal footnote :
Southey indulged, at times, in mild and gentle satire,
such as left no festering wound. In Mrs. Hall's album he
wrote the following. I must premise that the autographs
of Joseph Buonaparte and Daniel O'Connell occupied the
"opposite page." On the same page are the autographs
of Amelia Opie and Maria Edgeworth :
" Birds of a feather flock togethe-:,
But ride the opposite page,
And thence you may gather I'm not of a feather
With some of the birds in this cage.
" ROBERT SournEY, 22d October, 1836."

Some years afterwards Charles Dickens, good-humour-
edly referring to Southey's change of opinion, wrote in the
album, immediately under Southey's lines, the following:—
" NoW if I don't make
The completest mistake
That ever put man in a rage,
This bird of two weathers
Has moulted his feathers,
And loft them in some other cage.
" Boz."
Mr. S. C. Hall's paper on Southey should be re-
ferred to in its entirety, however, precisely as it here
appears in this January number of the Art Journal
—a number giving the happiest augury for the
Art:Journal in the New Year.
A Birmingham contemporary announces that the
wire and principal materials for the new Atlantic cable ire
being manufactured in that town. The cable will be laid
down in the course 91 the ensuing summer.