tiguity or near proximity. The town-a each of these there is a "village "an aggregation of families round a church or chapelit will follow that the villages of some extent are 17,150 in number, and, on an average, about 24 miles apart; so that the inhabitants of the country round them, distributed over an area of 5 miles, lie at the average limit 1 mile from the centre, or at the mean distance of six-sevenths of a mile. Great Britain has 815 towns of various magnitudes, either market-towns, countytowns, or cities; 580 in England and Wales, 225 in Scotland, and 10 in the Channel Islands. To 21 of the preceding "villages there is on an average a town, which stands in the midst of 110 square miles of country, equivalent to a square of 10 miles to the side, a circle having a radius of nearly 6 miles; so that the population of the country round is, on an average, about 4 miles from the The location of families is irregular, and is modified by the occupations, the manner of life, the soil, the configuration of the country, and the course of the rivers. But two general laws appear to operate very constantly-the one tending to the equable diffusion of the population, the other tending to its condensation round centres, at which men, women, and children can assemble weekly (villages). In conformity with the same laws, there is an arrangement of the villages around other centres, at which the men can meet weekly and return home in a day (market-towns); of these centres again separated by wider inter-centre. vals, around other centres, where the heads of the chief families can readily congregate periodically (county-towns); and finally, of the large towns round the capital, which would naturally find its place in the centre of the kingdom, and is only drawn from it by commercial exigencies, and the necessity of com'munication with the cities of other states. Under this arrangement, all the persons in frequent communication with each other, such as are closely allied, and such as are in branches of the same business, are brought into the closest proximity, and nearer to the central churches, chapels, markets, warehouses, town-halls, and courts of justice, than they would be, if the distribution of families was uniform over the face of the country. The population amounted to 10,556,288 in the 815 towns, which stand on 3164 miles of aréa. An average town of 12,953 inhabitants, stands on an area of nearly 4 square miles; equivalent to a square of 2 miles to the side, a circle of 1 mile radius, and the population is less than three-quarters of a mile from the centre. The population in the rest of Great Britain was 10,403,189; consequently if, for the sake of distinction, the detached houses, the villages, and small towns without markets, are called-country; at the present time the town and country populations of Great Britain differ so little in numbers, that they may be considered equal, for by the abstracts 10,556,288 people live in the towns, and 10,403,189 in the country. In the towns there were 5.2 persons to an acre-in the country 5.3 acres to a person. The density in the country was 120 persons-in the towns 3337 persons-to a square mile. A view of the town and country population, in combination with the area upon which it is located, is presented in the following Table : area of 101 square miles. But a simpler notion of the average distribution of the population of England is obtained by conceiving the area of 58,320 square miles divided into 583 squares, each containing 25 square figures of 4 square miles; a market-town in the central square containing 15,501 inhabitants, and the 24 similar squares arranged symmetrically around it in villages containing churches and chapels, and houses holding in the aggregate 16,000 inhabitants. Now, imagine the figures to be of every variety of form as well as size, and a clear idea is obtained of the way that the ground of the island has been taken up, and is occupied by the population. The English towns are at the distance, on an average, of 10 miles from the centre of one to the centre of the other. The Scotch towns are 12,7th miles apart, and each Scotch town contains on an average less than half the population of the English towns. The 815 towns are grouped around 87 county-towns-52 in England, 32 in Scotland, and 3 chief towns, equivalent to county-towns, in the Islands of the British Seas. Each of the central county-towns was surrounded on an average by eight or nine other towns, extending over an average area of 1,067 square miles, equivalent to a square of 33 miles to the side; a circle of 18 miles radius: and without allowing for the extreme distance of the Islands in the British Seas, they are 35 miles apart. The population of the countytowns of Great Britain and the chief towns of the Channel Islands amounted to about 626,547 in 1801, and to 1,391,538 in 1851; in England and Wales the population of the county-towns was about 473,239 in 1801, and 1,076,670 in 1851.* The market-town serves the same purposes as the village, for it has its church and chapel as well as its market; the county-town serves the same purposes as the village and the market-town, with others superadded. The county-town, as is the case at Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Norwich, Northampton, and Carlisle, is often a seat of manufacture; and in some counties the county-town is illdefined or undetermined. The population of the two or more considerable towns in which the assizes are, in such cases, alternately held, has been taken for the purpose of framing the Table: thus, for the county-towns of Cornwall, Bodmin and Truro have been taken; Colchester and Chelmsford for Essex; Bridgwater, Taunton, and Wells for Somerset ; Bury St. Edmunds and Ipswich for Suffolk; Croydon, Guildford, and Kingston for Surrey; Warwick and Coventry for Warwick. These towns are only counted as equivalent to the central town of other counties. If we select from the rest 18 county-towns † which are * In some counties the chief town is undetermined, and the assizes are held at two towns alternately. It is here assumed that the two towns, in such cases, are equivalent to the one town in others, as is explained in the following paragraph. Aylesbury, Bodmin, Hereford, Shrewsbury, without any considerable extraneous employment, it is found that their population increased only from 82,196 to 141,062 in 50 years, or in the ratio of 72 per cent. Of the general system of towns which pervade every county, a certain proportion has acquired an adventitious but extraordinary importance and magnitude; they have been created and are sustained by special circumstances for special purposes, and are either places of public resort as watering-places, or ports, or the seats of mining and manufacturing enterprise: such for example are Brighton in Sussex; Bath in Somersetshire; Cheltenham in Gloucestershire; Portsmouth and Southampton in Hampshire; Plymouth in Devonshire; Birmingham in Warwickshire; Wolverhampton in Staffordshire; Liverpool, Manchester, and many other large towns in Lancashire; Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Hull, in Yorkshire; Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Northumberland; Merthyr Tydfil in Wales; Glasgow in Scotland. Towns of this class are, considered only in their local relations, naturally towns of an inferior order; and even in advanced periods of British history several of them were villages or small market-towns; but with the progress of industry, the extension of commerce, the increase of wealth, and the aggrandisement of the empire, they have grown, and have almost acquired a metropolitan character; so much do they exceed departmental towns in population, extent, riches, and social activity. London the Metropolis besides the churches and chapels of the villages, the markets of the towns, the courts of justice of the county-towns, includes the commerce of a great seaport, the manufactures of many towns-the emporium of the empire-the palace of the sovereign-the seat of the government, of the legislature, of the central courts, of the heads of commerce, of the learned professions, of literature, and of science. London extends over an area of 78,029 acres, on the sides of the Thames, into Kent, Surrey, and Middlesex; and the number of its inhabitants, continually increasing, was two millions three hundred and sixty-two thousands two hundred and thirty-six on the day that the Census was taken. If we take only towns of considerable magnitude, Great Britain, it will be found, contained in 1851 seventy towns of 20,000 inhabitants and upwards; and it is shown in the Table below, that while the population of such towns was in the proportion of 23 per cent. of the total population in 1801, it amounted to 34 per cent. of the enumerated population of the country in 1851. The increase of London was 1,403,373 inhabitants, of the other great towns 3,206,152; of London and the great towns 4,609,525; of the smaller While the population of the country and of towns and the country 5,770,996 inhabitants. the small towns increased 71 per cent., the Hertford, Huntingdon, Lancaster, Winchester, Stafford, Warwick, Appleby, Devizes, Salisbury, Ruthin, Mold, Bala, Haverfordwest, Presteigne. annual rate of increase in Great Britain during the same half-century was 1.37. Those towns have increased most rapidly in which strawplait, cotton, pottery, and iron are manufac DENSITY AND PROXIMITY OF THE POPULATION. The greater part (3,022,776) of the increase (5,363,650) in the six classes of towns was in London and in the manufacturing towns; the seaports, the towns which are in mining districts, or are engaged in hardware manufactured. tures, and the county-towns, severally contributed more than three-quarters of a million to the increase; the increase of the people living in watering-places was 200,164. In the latter class the rate of increase was the greatest; it was 2.561 per cent. annually. The annual rate of increase was 2.38 in the manufacturing towns, 2.34 in the mining and hardware towns, 2:19 in the seaports, 1.82 in London, and 1:61 in the county-towns. The In statistical inquiries it is usual to compare the numbers of the population with the area of the soil, in order to determine what is called the density of the population. Thus the population of Sussex in 1851 was 339,604, while the population of Berkshire was 199,224, from which it is at once learnt that Sussex contained 140,380 more inhabitants than Berkshire. Upon the other hand the area of Sussex is nearly 1484 square miles, and the area of Berkshire is 882 square miles. Putting these numbers in the form of a proportion, we find that the inhabitants on a square mile in Sussex amounted on the average-taking one square mile with another-to 229. In like manner with respect to Berkshire, the proportion shows a population of 226 to a square mile. Although, therefore, the population and the area of the two counties differ so considerably, they are brought by this simple process into comparison, and the density of the population is found to differ only in the proportion of 229 to 226 on a square mile. The result implies, by the method of obtaining it, only that the average proportion of people to a square mile in the two counties is 229 and 226 persons; or that the population is such that it would furnish 229 and 226 people respectively to each square mile. The actual distribution over the area is learnt by further inquiry. 66 Instead of "density of population," a French writer (M. le Baron de Prony) has proposed the term " specific population," after the analogy of "specific gravity," which is in use in scientific works. The terms in common use, thinly peopled," "populous," "populousness," express the same idea, but in general terms. By changing the area-unit to acre, and dividing the acres by the popula tion, the acres to each person are obtained. The 624 districts of England and Wales vary in respect of density from 185,751 persons in East London, to 18 in Bellingham (Northumberland), on a square mile. the ratio of 3 to 2. In the London división the mean proximity in 1801 was 21 yards, in 1851 it was 14 yards. The population on the same area increased 146 per cent., or in the proportion of 100 to 246; the difficulty of personal communication, of delivering letters, parcels, goods, to every personpressed by multiplying the distance from person to person into the numbers-increased only 57 per cent., or in the proportion of 100 to 157. -ex The mean distance of the population from the centre of the parishes, subdistricts, districts, and towns-and the distance of the towns from a common centre—are also important elements, which can be readily determined upon the hypothesis of uniform distribution. Thus the population in a circular district would be under one arrangement at an average distance, equal to two-thirds of the radius; under another, one-half of the radius; in a form concentrated round the centre, it may be still less distant from that point, and thus afford great facility to every kind of central action. On this line depends the distance which a doctor, clergyman, registrar, or messenger of any kind, travels, who has to visit a small portion of the population every day. TERRITORIAL SUBDIVISIONS. Islands. The British population is distributed over a great multitude of islands, which rise between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea. The Island of Great Britain is surrounded by the Isle of Man, Anglesey, the Scilly Islands, the Isle of Wight, the outProximity. The population may be looked lying Channel Islands, the Shetland Isles, the at in another point of view. Every person Orkneys, and the Hebrides, each having is in direct or indirect communication with generally a mainland encircled by small other persons surrounding him; and the islands, and rocks bare or scantily covered, extent, intimacy, and number of the relations which sea-fowls inhabit, fishermen in their between people depend very much upon the boats visit, and shepherds sometimes dwell degree of their proximity. If the persons, in during summer. Five hundred islands houses, villages, towns, are twice as far apart and rocks have been numbered, but inhafrom each other in one country as they are bitants were only found and distinguished in another, the force and interaction of the on the morning of March 31, 1851, in one two communities will differ to an incon-hundred and seventy-five islands, or groups of ceivable extent. Proximity can be expressed with the same precision as density of popu-| lation, upon the same hypothesis of equal distribution; and its relative value in different countries and districts is equally interesting. Thus, the people of England were, on an average, 153 yards asunder in 1801, and 108 yards asunder in 1851; the mean distance apart of their houses was 362 yards in 1801, and 252 yards in 1851. On the line of proximity depends the distance which an enumerator, or a messenger who has to call at every house, travels on his mission. A messenger to deliver 1000 letters at 1000 houses of average proximity in 1801 would travel 206 miles (362,000 yards); in 1851, to deliver 1000 letters at 1000 houses of average proximity he would travel only 143 miles (252,000 yards). The population on the same area has doubled; the proximity has increased the separation has diminished-in islands. The coast, against the North Sea, has few islands, except Thanet, Sheppey, and some lowlands, which are isolated at high water: Coquet, Staples, Holy Island, against the east coast of England-Inch-Keith, Inchcolm, and May, against the east coast of Scotland-are the only islands found to be inhabited. The Orkneys and the Shetlands lie to the north. St. Michael, Looe, and the Isle of Wight, are the only islands on the south coast, except those sometimes connected with the land, and the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. All the other islands lie on the west coast, with Ireland in the front rank, extending from the Scilly Islands through Anglesey, Man, and the Hebrides, to the Orkneys and the Shetlands, where the waves of the Atlantic rave and break on their way to the coast of Norway. These islands, in the earliest period of our written history, were peopled by Celts. Britain was their holy island; it was the seat of their schools and of their most sacred groves. The Isles of Anglesey and Man, both known under the name of Mona to the Romans, were the seats of the Druidic hierarchy and worship. Iona-a small island in the Hebrides, now containing five hundred and four inhabitants, was the station of Columba, who founded an order of missionaries, and contributed to the diffusion of the light of Christianity over Britain. Holy Island-the Lindisfarne of the first Saxon historian-was a great centre of Saxon learning and religion, reflected from Ireland; it was the counterpart of Heligoland and Rugen, the shrines of the continental Saxons and Germans. The greater part of the islands, and of points on the coast terminating in ey, ay, a, (island), ness (promontory), holm, as well as others, bear names which the Northmen gave them; and were seized, partly for the purposes of commerce, but more commonly as naval stations, from which they could harry and tax the coasts and inland country. An island was a market, a warehouse, and a castle to these Northmen; who, bred round the sinuosities of the Danish peninsula, in the recesses of the Baltic, and the Fiords of Norway, practised their arts as udal farmers, fishermen, and merchants-forged anchors built ships that lived in the Atlantic-fought incessantly along their own coast, from the Elbe to the Naze, to Drontheim, Lofoden Islands, Cape North-and in the eighth century and the centuries following, sailed in fleets, at one time down the east and west coasts of Great Britain,-at another either round France, Portugal and Spain into the Mediterranean, or to Iceland and the coasts of North America. Men of the Atlantic, in their ships their sea-horses, their oceanskates, as they called their craft they braved the dangers of the rocks and the waves at sea-where their foes never met them-the arms of Celts, Gaels, and Saxons, on land— and succeeded in effecting permanent settlements in France and England. As the Jutes and Saxons settled on the south coast, so the Danes held, and have left the most permanent traces in, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and the lowlands of Scotland. The Norwegians for some time made the Orkneys the great centre of their expeditions. Rollo, from whom William I. was the fifth in descent, was some time in the Orkneys before he conquered Normandy; and the Northmen from these islands extended their power over the Hebrides, Ireland, and the coast of France. As the organization of the great nations on the mainland advanced, the relative power of the Northmen declined; and it was impossible that the inhabitants of the small islands round Britain could long resist the power of even the Gaelic population, little given to the sea as it always has been,which gradually recovered its ground, and diffused its language over the Hebrides and the Isle of Man. In Caithness, the Orkneys, and the Shetlands, the Norse language, as well as the men, held its ground, and has latterly given way to pure English, while the Gaelic is spoken in the Highlands. The Scandinavian race survives in its descendants round the coasts of the British Isles; and the soul of the old viking still burns in the seamen of the British fleet, in the Deal boatmen, in the fishermen of the Orkneys; and in that adventurous, bold, direct, skilful, mercantile class, that has encircled the world by its peaceful conquests. What the Greeks were in the Mediterranean Sea, the Scandinavians have been in the Atlantic Ocean. A population of a race, on the islands and the island-coasts, impregnated with the sea, in fixing its territorial boundaries, would exhibit but little sympathy with the remonstrating Roman poet, in his Sabine farm over the Mediterranean : Nequidquam Deus abscidit Terras, si tamen impiæ Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada. They made islands parts of counties-parts of parishes. The mainland of the Great Island is still divided, for some purposes, into England, Wales, and Scotland; the Isle of Wight is a part of Hampshire, the Scilly Islands of Cornwall; Anglesey is a Welsh county; the Isles of Arran, Bute, and Cumbray constitute Bute, a county of Scotland. In passing northwards, the islands over the sea, like the lakes inland, are all parts of Scottish counties: Islay, Jura, Mull, Coll, Canna, Rum, and Muck belong to Argyll; Skye, Rona, Raasay, Scalpa, Soa, and Eigg to Inverness. inhabited. Harrist belongs also to Ínverness, Of the 200* Hebrides, 81 were * The numbers of these islands have not been accurately enumerated, but are here given on the authority of M'Culloch, in his Geographical Dictionary. St. Kilda is in the parish of Harris; and, away 70 miles from the mainland of the western Hebrides, it rises 1,500 feet above the waves. Rocks and inaccessible precipices surround it, except at one point on the north side, where there is a rocky bay; and another on the south-east side, where there is a landing-place which leads up to the village of St. Kilda, à quarter of a mile from is the only inhabited place in St. Kilda and three the sea, on the sloping base of a steep hill. This other islands of the group, which are the resort of the seafowls, that, with fish and small patches of land, furnish employment and food for the inhabitants. The population has not before been stated, and has probably never before 1851 been officially enumerated. It was found to consist of 32 families in 32 houses, and of 110 persons; of whom 48 were males, 62 were females. The 33 Gillies, 23 McDonalds, 20 McQuiens, 13 Fergusons, 9 McCrimons, 9 McKinnons, 2 Morrisons, and 1 McCleod, were all born on the island, except one woman, aged 35, a McDonald's wife, who was imported from Sutherland. The number of men between the ages of 20 and 60 is 25, and the number of women of the same age is one more, or 26; of the children under 20 there are 22 males, 30 females; 1 old man is above the age of 70, с |