other extraneous charges. Our late excellent king's regard for economy
led him, in the early part of his reign, to approve a new arrangement of
the civil list expenditure, by which he accepted of a fixed revenue, in
lieu of those improvable funds which had formerly been appropriated to
the crown. On the revision of the civil list in 1816, it appeared, that
had George III. conducted the entire branch of expenditure with those
funds which had been provided for his predecessors, there would at that
period have remained to the crown a total surplus of £6,300,000. which
sum the public had gained by the change of provision. _Quarterly
Review_.

* * * * *


BRITISH ALMANAC AND COMPANION.


Swift, if our memory serves us aright, compares abstracts, abridgments,
and summaries to burning-glasses, and has something about a full book
resembling the tail of a lobster. The French too have a proverb--"as
full as an egg"--but these home similes will hardly give the public an
idea of the vast variety of useful matters which these two _Year Books_
contain.

The _Almanac_, besides an excellent arrangement, astronomical,
meteorological, and philosophical, contains a list of common indigenous
field plants in flower, and even the taste of the epicure is consulted
in a table of fish in season, at the foot of each month. The
Miscellaneous Register includes nearly all the Court, Parliament, and
other Lists of a Red Book; and a List of Mail Coach routes direct from