heiress of the House of York. Henry VII. was probably the best available representative of the House of Lancaster.* But it naturally occurred to Henry's supporters to strengthen his very doubtful claims to the throne by his marriage with Elizabeth; and, though Henry showed considerable disinclination to the marriage, he was happily compelled to yield; and the rival Roses were thus effectually blended in this fortunate union.

VII. One of the children sprung from this alliance was destined to make a still more decisive marriage. If the Wars of the Roses were practically terminated by the marriage of Henry VII. with Elizabeth of York, the marriage of their daughter Margaret with James IV. led directly to the union between Scotland and England. This result was, indeed, hardly foreseen by the statesmen who projected the marriage, and more than a century passed before, on the death of Elizabeth, Margaret's great-grandson, James VI. of Scotland, became obviously the direct representative of the Tudors, the direct heir of the Saxon Cerdic.

The family which thus attained this great position proved as unworthy of rule as the later Bourbons. The first of our Stuart Kings was one of the worst men, the last of them one of the worst sovereigns, that ever sat on the throne of England. But the liberties of England were chiefly won in the reigns of worthless monarchs. And the advantages which were derived from the union of the whole of Great Britain into one kingdom compensated for the disadvantages which she endured under the House of Stuart.

VIII. The misconduct of the last of these monarchs was too flagrant for Englishmen to tolerate, and the Revolution of 1688 occurred. But the Revolution would never have taken the form which it assumed if it had not been for another marriage. Mary, James's eldest daughter, and in default of his son by his second marriage his direct heir, was the wife of William of Orange; and the Crown was offered to William and Mary, with a reversion to Mary's sister Anne. Parliament thus vindicated the right, which the nation had frequently asserted in earlier days, of selecting for itself its own monarch. Unhappily neither Mary nor her sister left any posterity, and Parliament, in 1701, again interfered to settle the

The direct heir of John of Gaunt was the King of Castile, who was descended from John of Gaunt and his second wife, Constance. Henry VII. was, of course, only descended from his third wife, Catherine Swinford, whose elder children, though legitimised by Act of Parliament, were born out of wedlock.

Crown on the heirs of the Electress Sophia, being Protestants; a step which naturally brings us to the last marriage on our list.

IX. Sophia, on whom the Crown was thus settled, was the daughter of Elizabeth, the sister of Charles I. and the wife of the King of Bohemia. In strict hereditary right she was, therefore, further from the Crown than the descendants of the First Charles, some of whom still survive. The presence of our Royal Family on the throne, therefore, is a proof that direct descent, without the will of the nation, cannot confer an absolute title on any prince. The immediate effect of the marriage, however, was to give the Kings of England a direct interest in the affairs of Germany; and we owe to this circumstance some, at least, of the wars of the eighteenth century. Happily, the existence of the Salic Law terminated the anomaly in 1837. Hanover passed away to the direct male representative of George III., and England-so far as Europe is concerned was practically thenceforward a synonym for the British Isles.

Here, briefly stated, are the circumstances of nine marriages which have had a large influence on the fortunes of this country. English history would not have been what it is-nay, England herself would not have been what she is—if it had not been for these marriages. And the reader who reflects on their consequences will probably agree with the conclusion which it is the object of this article to establish that, however much they have been neglected by historians, the decisive marriages of England have had more effect on its development than the decisive. battles.

S. WALPOLE.

TH

'HERE is reason for the frequent inquiry which meets the ears of medical men in the present day: Is it not true that cancer is increasing? For, however much we may attempt to throw into the shade our convictions upon this matter, the records of the Registrar General remain to show in all the obtrusiveness of an unvarnished statement the annual increasing mortality from this terrible disease. Among all the diseases from which humanity suffers there is none which approaches in virulence the onset and development of cancer. It has sounded the death knell of many a gifted man and woman-who in other respects at the time were in all probability in the enjoyment of perfect health-long before their life work was completed. This is precisely the attribute which differentiates cancer from most other human maladies. It seems to revel in attacking persons who are able to point with pride to a healthy record. How often does it happen that

a healthy, robust-looking woman, full of activity of mind and body, visits a surgeon's consulting-room, seeking his advice with respect to a "small lump" in her breast which has given her some concern, merely because, as she expresses it, "it does not go away, and seems to be getting larger." If sentiment could be allowed much sway under these circumstances it could not fail to be exhibited by the surgeon. For there are few more painful duties which he is called upon to discharge than that of having to acquaint his patient under circumstances like these with the fact that she is suffering from cancer. She has come to him, as is often the case, in the full enjoyment of life, and looking forward perhaps to new projects which the continuance of her good health, at middle age, has amply justified her in entertaining. True it may be that some months previously she passed through a period of trouble-the loss of a relative, or some misfortune which induced, from the suddenness with which it came, a more or less degree of mental shock. But the effects of this had, according to her own showing, long passed off. As far as she could tell, her health was now just the same as it had always

been—and her appearance would fully bear out the statement that she had always been a healthy woman. And yet she comes with cancer; in the matter of diagnosis there is no room for doubt. The signs are unequivocal; there is no escape from the fate which has befallen her. When, therefore, the terrible truth is first brought under her notice, it is natural enough that she should pale under the misgiving excited by the revelation. It is not given to all women to be strong-minded at such a supreme moment. Following the deliberate verdict, albeit tempered with sympathy, pronounced by the surgeon, comes, as it were, the sentence in the following words: "There is only one hope for your life and that is by having the disease and the whole of the affected parts thoroughly removed at the earliest possible opportunity."

Cancer, so to speak, possesses a personality which can only be likened to that of a ruthless destroyer, who in his gross acts of vandalism spares nothing which comes within the sphere of his malignant influence. How many "fair women and brave men," possessing in a high degree those charms which ever attract the attention and admiration of their fellow human beings, have suffered hideous disfigurement, undergone hideous anguish of mind and body, and passed to "that bourne whence no traveller returns "—having in their life-time been robbed, as it might almost be said, of all their divinity of form-the victims of cancer. Those only who have seen cancer and its effects know of the terrible ravages which it commits until death happily releases the sufferer. From tissue to tissue it spreads, when left unchecked, locally, and both by the blood and the lymph-streams it is conveyed to parts more distant, and in this manner becomes generally disseminated.

Enough has now probably been said to show the terrible nature of cancer as a disease, while this brief outline of some of its features will be ample to indicate the serious importance of the, unhappily, incontestable fact of its growing frequency and of its ever augmenting mortality. For some years attention has been drawn to the alarming increase in malignant disease. Apart from the incontrovertible evidence contained in the Registrar General's Report for later years, medical men are now generally admitting that cancer comes more frequently under their notice than used formerly to be the case. In natural keeping, too, with these facts, hospital surgeons commonly aver that the ratio of their operations for malignant disease is also higher now than in previous years. In all probability, therefore, if inquiry were made into the total number of cases of cancer received for treatment in the wards of the

London hospitals, it would be found that during, for example, the past decade a definite increase had occurred. For the purpose of ascertaining to what extent this supposition might be true, I have analysed the returns for malignant disease, as recorded in the statistical tables of St. Bartholomew's Hospital for the decade 1881-1890, and the following are the figures:

Cases of Malignant Disease admitted into St. Bartholomew's Hospital during the Decade 1881-1890.

Thus, it will be seen from this table that there was almost a continuous rise in the first years of the decade, and, despite the fall at the end, the figures show a continuous increase upon those recorded for the year 1881. It would be interesting were a similar estimate to be made of the cancer patients in all the large hospitals in England during the period named, for the purposes of comparison and of deduction with respect to the question of the increase of malignant disease. But what is to be gathered from the perusal of the Registrar General's Returns upon this subject? What figures are therein contained bearing upon this vitally important question? In the first place, I cannot do better than quote the opinion of one who must be held to be the highest authority in England in respect to these statistics, namely, Dr. William Ogle, whose contemplated retirement from the post of Deputy Registrar General will result in a distinct loss to the Statistical Department of Somerset House. Dr. Ogle, in his report for 1889, while discussing the increase of cancer, says: "Some increase is most certainly attributable to increased accuracy in statement of cause, and to the system introduced some years back into this office of writing for further information in cases where some vague cause, such as 'tumour,' has been given as the cause of death in the original certificate-a system which added, for instance, in the year 1889 no less than 421 deaths to the heading cancer. Nevertheless, in the face of the constant and great growth of mortality under this heading, and the expressed belief of medical practitioners specially engaged in dealing with this class of diseases, that they are really becoming more and more common, it seems scarcely possible to maintain the optimistic view that the whole apparent increase can be thus explained;