it is amusing to find in the love-matches of
boys that the statistics bear out the satires of Thackeray and Balzac.
Again, the husbands of young women aged twenty and under average a
little above twenty-five years, and the inequality of age diminishes
thenceforward, till for women who have reached thirty the respective
ages are equal: after thirty-five years, women, like men, marry those
younger than themselves, the disproportion increasing with age, till at
fifty-five it averages nine years.

The greatest number of marriages for men take place between the ages of
twenty and twenty-five in England, between twenty five and thirty in
France, and between twenty-five and thirty-five in Italy and Belgium.
Finally, in Hungary the number of individuals who marry is seventy-two
in a thousand each year; in England it is 64; in Denmark, 59; in France,
57, the city of Paris showing 53; in the Netherlands, 52; in Belgium,
43; in Norway, 36. Widowers indulge in second marriages three or four
times as often as widows. For example, in England (land of Mrs. Bardell)
there are 66 marriages of widowers against 21 of widows; in Belgium
there are 48 to 16; in France, 40 to 12. Old Mr. Weller's paternal
advice, to "beware of the widows," ought surely to be supplemented by a
maxim to beware of widowers.

SHAKESPEARE, in one of his most famous madrigals, draws a vivid contrast
between youth and age, which, he declares, "cannot live together:"

Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather,
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare:
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold.

Science, which ruthlessly destroys so much poetry by its mattock and
spade, its scales, foot-rules and gauges, must now, we should judge,
take grave exception to the preceding bit of poesy and to the thousand
repetitions of its sentiment by the bards of all ages. By means of a
thermometer lately constructed to register with exactitude the degree of
heat in the human body, it is found, after numerous experiments under
varying circumstances, that the instrument marks 37.08 deg. of heat on an
average for persons between twenty-one and thirty years of age, while it
marks 37.46 deg. for people aged eighty. In face of this fact what becomes
of the "fervors of youth" and the "chills of age"? The highest average
temperatures in the human body, as indicated by this gauge, are those
which exist from birth to puberty--that is to say, 37.55 deg