in order to escape from toil. Under this depression, and as a relief from a peculiar inward sinking feeling, they have a craving for the stimulus of ardent spirits to an extent inconceivable by persons in happier circumstances; it amounts to a passion, and these debilitated beings are sometimes almost unable to control it. The same poison, by deranging and weakening the digestive organs, produces complaints of a scrofulous and consumptive character, generally accompanied by a feverish and nervous irritability, constantly urging them to the unrestrained gratification of their appetites; and so the process of degradation goes forward. The effort to struggle against the surrounding mass of filth and wretchedness, is given up in sheer hopelessness, and the man's best energies are sapped by the irresistible poison, even while he is endeavoring to resist its influence. The laborer comes home tired, and is glad to escape from the dirt and discomfort,-the poisonous atmosphere of his home,—to a pothouse. In the morning there is no refreshing meal for his support,-again he is driven to the beershop; overpowered by the internal craving and external temptations, he becomes a drunkard, and, in time, unequal to hard work. Soon the comforts of life are gone; then its decencies are neglected; the moral feelings, one after the other, are broken down before the most sordid appetites, alike ungovernable and insatiable: he is crushed by drunkenness, profligacy, and poverty, and sinks from one stage of vice and misery to another, till the intellectual faculties become dimmed, all moral and religious feeling expires, the domestic affections are destroyed, all regard for law or property is lost, and hope is quenched in desperate wretchedness: so that at last, owing to these withering causes, families have been found, even in London, huddling together like animals, the very instincts of humanity obliterated, and, like the brutes, relieving every want, and gratifying every passion in the full view of the community. These are the reasons why the districts of filth are not only the districts of fever, scrofula, consumption, and cholera, but also of crime. Habits are early formed of idleness and dishonesty,—of brutality, inexpressible profligacy, and sensual indulgence; and here are educated the irreclaimable malefactors."

These are no fancied sketches, but awful realities. Such pictures of the sad moral effects of living in badly located, over-crowded, and filthy habitations, are to be seen in most of the populous cities, and, to some extent, in the country. We have had frequent occasion to enter these abodes of wretchedness. "The offensive refuse which even animals will bury out of sight, is brought into perpetual contact with human beings. It stagnates in the courts and alleys, flows into the cellars, and is sucked up into the walls. Men, women and children eat, drink and sleep, surrounded by its disgusting effluvia. The pig in its sty is not more familiar with its own odor, than is the wretched immortal in the dwelling which ignorant carelessness has built for him, and municipal and legislative indifference has suffered him to inhabit."

In some of these houses, one, two, or more families are found in one and the same room,-cooking, eating, drinking, washing, dressing, undressing, sleeping, and doing many other acts namable and nameless. Fathers and mothers, men and women, boys and girls, may be seen living and sleeping in promiscuous confusion. In some instances, too, persons may be found in the immediate presence, or in the same bed, with a dead body, struck down with typhus, cholera, or some other zymotic disease, or by the slow wasting of consumption; and in others, a child is born, or an adult dies,-one immortal spirit makes its entrance into, and another makes its exit from, this world, at nearly the same time, in the same wretched abode, and surrounded by similar appalling circumstances. Can moral principle be inculcated in such an atmosphere, and surrounded by such influences? Must not degradation, vice, crime, be their natural, inevitable tendency? If they are not, in individual instances, they must be taken as rare exceptions. "You cannot degrade the physical man by a life-long familiarity with scenes of filth, and indecency, without debasing his whole moral nature." 991

The object of the measures we recommend is to remove filth and prevent disease, to introduce those accommodations which

1 Mr. Chadwick, in his report, says of such scenes in England, "the corpse is never absent from the sight of the survivors; eating, drinking or sleeping, it is there." (See Sanitary Movement, p. 13.)

allow, and reform those habits which prevent, the elevation of the physical man, the social nature and moral condition of our fellow-beings. They are the best handmaids we can give to prosperity, to morality, and to religion.

Dr. Simon, whom we have often quoted, gives us a similar picture. Among the influences prejudicial to health, must be reckoned the social condition of the lower classes; and I refer to this the more especially, because, often in discussion of sanitary subjects, the filthy, or slovenly, or improvident, or destructive, or intemperate, or dishonest habits of these classes, are cited as an explanation of the inefficiency of measures designed for their advantage. It has been urged that to bring improved domestic arrangements within the reach of such persons is a waste and a folly; that if you give them a coal-scuttle, a washing-basin, and a water-closet, each of these several utensils will be applied to the purpose of another, or one to the purposes of all; and that meanwhile the object of charitable solicitude will remain in the same unredeemed lowness and misery as before. Now it is unquestionable, and I admit it, that in houses combining all the sanitary evils which I have enumerated, there do dwell whole hordes of persons who struggle so little in self-defence against that which surrounds them, that they may be considered almost indifferent to its existence, or almost acclimated to endure its continuance. It is too true that among these classes there are swarms of men and women who have yet to learn that human beings should dwell differently from cattle; swarms to whom personal cleanliness is utterly unknown; swarms by whom delicacy and decency, in their social relations, are quite unconceived. Men and women, boys and girls, in scores of each, using jointly one single, common privy; grown persons of both sexes sleeping in common with their married parents; a woman suffering travail in the midst of the males and females of three several families of fellow-lodgers in a single room; an adult son sharing his mother's bed during her confinement; such are instances recently within my knowledge of the degree and of the manner in which a people may relapse into the habits of savage life, when their domestic condition is neglected, and when they are suf

fered to habituate themselves to the uttermost depths of physical obscenity and degradation. Contemplating such cases, I feel the deepest conviction that no sanitary system can be adequate to the requirements of the time, or can cure those radical evils which infect the under-framework of society, unless the importance be distinctly recognized, and the duty manfully undertaken, of improving the social condition of the poor. Those who suffer under the calamitous sanitary conditions which I have disclosed, have been led, perhaps, to consider them as inseparable from poverty, and after their long habituation to such influences, who can wonder if personal and moral degradation confirm them more and more to the physical debasement of their abode? In the midst of inevitable domestic filth, who can wonder that personal cleanliness should be neglected? In an atmosphere which forbids the breath to be drawn freely, which maintains habitual ill health, which depresses all the natural spring and buoyancy of life, who can wonder that frequent recourse should be had to stimulants, which, however pernicious in themselves, still for a moment dispel the incessant languor of the place, give temporary vigor to the brain, and cheer the flagging pulses of a poisoned circulation? Who can wonder that habits of improvidence and recklessness should arise in a population, who not only has much ignorance and prejudice amongst it, but which likewise is unaccustomed to consideration and kindness? Who can wonder that the laws of society should at times be forgotten by those whom the eye of society habitually overlooks, and whom the heart of society often appears to discard? I believe that now there is a very growing feeling abroad that the poor and degraded of a Christian country can no longer, in their own ignorance and helplessness, be suffered to encounter all the chances which accompany destitution, and which is allied, often indissolubly, to recklessness, profligacy, and perdition. The task of interfering in behalf of these classes, however insensible they may be of their own danger and frequent degradation, begins at length to be recognized as an obligation of society."

It is right that these things should be known,-it is well that

they should be considered. We have one pestilence after another to warn us that the destroying angel is at hand. In the mean time, thousands of citizens are hurried through a miserable existence to an untimely end. While we write, they are dropping into their graves. We fill our jails with felons, and we have city missions, and put our trust in education; but the influences of filth and disease are stronger than the police-man, the missionary, and the schoolmaster. To the abodes which we have described, "the Sabbath never comes. In vain its morning eye peeps kindly in at the gloomy windows, for it meeteth no recognition there! In vain its meridian beams, struggling through the murkiness and filth, above, around, and beneath, seek to shine into the doorways of those den-like homes,for they are quickly quenched by the deep darkness that abideth there! There the Sabbath's decencies are never cultivated, the Sabbath's peace never enjoyed, the Sabbath's festival is never kept, the Sabbath's blessing is never known!"

VI. It should be approved because the PROGRESS OF THE AGE

DEMANDS IT.

The half century just now drawing to a close, is a wonderful period in the world's history. Inquiry and discovery have been abroad in the earth. New facts and new truths have been ascertained-new sciences have been developed, and the boundaries of old ones have been greatly enlarged. These discoveries have produced revolution after revolution,-have multiplied the means of convenience, comfort, pleasure, and luxury, until our social and practical life is a very different thing from the social and practical life that existed fifty years ago. And were it not that we have grown up with the results, they would appear almost beyond the limits of reality or possibility.

How are these wonders produced? Mainly by giving to the human mind a knowledge of new facts, and by directing this knowledge to the discovery of the laws of nature, and to their combination and practical application. The wonders of the steam engine, besides giving us a new and most important stationary mechanical power, has revolutionized our systems and habits of locomotion, by sea and by land. A journey from Bos