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American war. In 1863 he was sent to Lancashire by Lord Palmerston's Government as Engineer Commissioner to organize, under Mr. Villiers, M.P., President of the Poor Law Board, "Work for Wages" amongst the distressed cotton operatives. Sanitary works were carried out simultaneously in ninety-three towns and places within the distressed cotton district. Government advancing by instalments in the whole upwards of £1,750,000 at 3½ per cent., the entire of this sum having been expended, under the supervision of Mr. Rawlinson, at a cost to the Government of less than three shillings and sixpence per cent. Mr. Rawlinson having practically proved that Government could profitably lend money at 3½ per cent. for towns improvements and sanitary works generally, strongly advocated the extension of the practice to all cases, and consequently an Act is now in force under the powers of which the Exchequer Loan Commissioners can advance money to any Urban or Rural Sanitary Authority for terms extending to 60 years—30 years at 3½ per cent., 40 years at 3¾ per cent., and 50 years and upwards, at 4. per cent. Mr. Rawlinson has served on several other royal commissions and special Government inquiries, and is a member of the Army Sanitary Committee, which considers all questions connected with barracks, hospitals, and stations for the army, both at home, in India, and wherever British soldiers are stationed throughout the world. He was decorated with the civil companionship of the Bath (1865), and is at present Chief Engineering Inspector under the Local Government Board, and Commissioner to grant Certificates under the Rivers Pollution Prevention Act. He received the honour of knighthood Aug. 23, 1883.

READ, General John Meredith, Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Redeemer of Greece, F.S.A, M.R.I.A., F.R.G.S., statesman and diplomatist, is the representative of a family holding high position in the United States, and intimately associated with American history. It sprang from a younger son of the very ancient Berkshire, Hertfordshire, and Oxfordshire house, seated, says Sir Walter Scott, a thousand years ago in Northumbria, to which belonged the Reads (now extinct), baronets of Brockett Hall, and from which descend the baronets of Shipton and the Reades of Ipsden House. The first American ancestor, whose father, a staunch cavalier, took an active part for King Charles I. in the Civil Wars, purchased a manorial grant in the province of Maryland from Lord Baltimore. It is a remarkable fact that this family contributed three signers of the Declaration of Independence, and four framers and signers of the Constitution of the United States. General Read's great-grandfather, the Hon. George Read, of Delaware, one of the fathers and founders of the American Republic, originally held Office under the Crown as Attorney-General, and afterwards was one of the six signers of the Declaration of Independence, who were also framers and signers of the Constitution of the United States. His grandfather, the Hon John Read, was a senator of Pennsylvania, the American diplomatic agent under the Treaty of Amity with Great Britain in 1794, and the author of "British Debts." His father, the Hon. John Meredith Read, LL.D., Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, was one of the most distinguished jurists that America has produced, and at one time was prominently named as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. General Meredith Read is the only son of Chief Justice Read. He was born at Philadelphia, Feb. 21, 1837, and received his education in a military school. He commanded a corps of National Cadets, which furnished 127 officers during the