and densely-crowded manufacturing suburbs, in which pestilence has been supposed to have its chief and almost exclusive residence.

For instance-to begin with one of the prettiest towns in one of the most charming parts of EnglandMr. Gilbert reports that, his attention having been excited by the high diet recommended to the Guardians at Tiverton, in consequence of prevalent fever, he requested the medical officer of the Union to accompany him through a certain portion of that district. Before

however even reaching it, he was assailed by a smell clearly proclaiming the presence of malaria: he found the ground marshy, the sewers all open, some of the houses surrounded by wide uncovered drains full of animal and vegetable refuse. The inhabitants of these localities were distinguishable from those of the clean parts of the town by their sickly, miserable appearance: all he talked to either were or had been ill, and they presented a melancholy picture. The local authorities had often endeavoured to compel them to remove nuisances, and to cover the drains, but as, under the present state of the law, their powers were not sufficient, the evil had continued: accordingly, medical officers had been employed instead of the engineer; and, "comforts" and "high diet," instead of masonry and drainage.

It is quite true, that, as there are specks in the sun, so in a large country like England there must unavoidably exist a few dirty places, which Mr. Chadwick or any searching inquisitor has the power, at

his pleasure, to point out. We own, however, we were not a little startled at learning that Royalty itself was not only lately prevented from visiting Holyrood or Brighton, on account of fever proceeding from miasma, but that there exist loathsome nuisances dangerous to the public health, in its immediate neighbourhood, even at Windsor!

Mr. Parker, after stating that there is no town in the counties of Buckingham, Oxford, and Berks, in which the condition of the courts and back streets might not be materially improved by drainage, observes :

"Windsor, from the contiguity of the Palace, the wealth of the inhabitants, and the situation, might have been expected to be superior in this respect to any other provincial town. Of all the towns visited by me, Windsor is the worst beyond all comparison. From the Gas-works at the end of George-street a double line of open, deep, black, and stagnant ditches extends to Clewer-lane. From these ditches an intolerable stench is perpetually rising, and produces fever of a severe character. Mr. Bailey, the relieving officer, considers the neighbourhood of Garden-court in almost the same condition. 'There is a drain,' he says, 'running from the Barracks into the Thames across the Long Walk. That drain is almost as offensive as the black ditches extending to Clewerlane. The openings to the sewers in Windsor are exceedingly offensive in hot weather. The town is not well supplied with water, and the drainage is very defective.""

As snipes and wild-fowl, when they visit this country, at once fly to our marshes and fens, so does the cholera, wherever it travels, instinctively select for itself lodgings most congenial to its nature. The following

glimpse of one of them, in which the disease first made its appearance, deserves therefore attention. Mr. Atkinson, describing Gateshead, says of a person whom he found ill of the cholera :

"His lodgings were in a room of a miserable house situated in the very filthiest part of Pipewell-gate, divided into six apartments, and occupied by different families, to the number of twenty-six persons in all. The room contained three wretched beds, with two persons sleeping in each: it measured about twelve feet in length, and seven in breadth ; and its greatest height would not admit of a person's standing erect it received light from a small window, the sash of which was fixed. Two of the number lay ill of the cholera, and the rest appeared afraid of the admission of pure air, having carefully closed up the broken panes with plugs of old linen."

"It

Mr. Chadwick, however, states that the most wretched of the stationary population of which he had been able to obtain any account, or that he had ever beheld, was that in the wynds of Edinburgh and Glasgow. might admit of dispute," he observes, "but on the whole, it appeared to us that both the structural arrangements, and the condition of the population in Glasgow, were the worst of any we had seen in any part of Great Britain." Dr. Arnott, who perambulated the wynds of Glasgow, accompanied by Dr. Alison and Dr. Cowen, corroborates the above statement by details too offensive to be transcribed: suffice it to say, that, from one locality, seven hundred and fifty-four, of about five thousand cases of fever which occurred in the previous year, were carried to the hospitals. As a

striking contrast to this result, Mr. Chadwick states that, when the kelp manufacture lately ceased on the western coast of Scotland, although a vast population of the lowest class of people were thrown into extreme want-suffering from cold, hunger, and despair-nevertheless, from their scattered habitations being surrounded by pure air, cases of fever did not arise among them.

We will conclude this branch of the investigation by a very brief description of Inverness, copied from no less an authority than the Report of its own chief magistrate." Inverness," says the worthy Provost, "is a nice town, situated in a most beautiful country. . The people are, generally speaking, a nice people, but their sufferance of nastiness is past endurance."

II. Public arrangements external to the residences, by which the sanitary condition of the labouring population is affected.

This chapter Mr. Chadwick principally devotes to practical details as to drainage. We must content ourselves with a few specimens of his alleged facts.

Dr. Duncan doubts whether there is a single court in Liverpool which communicates with the street by an underground drain: and, having observed that sixtythree cases of fever had occurred in one year in Unioncourt, containing twelve houses, he visited it, and found the whole court inundated with fluid filth which had oozed through the walls from two adjacent cesspools. In one cellar he discovered, below the bed where the family slept, a well four feet deep, into which this

stinking fluid had been allowed to drain. It may be observed that there are eight thousand of these inhabited cellars in Liverpool, containing from thirtyfive thousand to forty thousand inmates; and that of two thousand three hundred and ninety-eight courts, which were examined, one thousand seven hundred and five were closed at one end so as to prevent ventilation. “Until very lately," says Mr. Burton, in his Report on "Edina, Scotia's darling seat,"

"the Cowgate, a long street, running along the lowest level of a narrow valley, had only surface drains. The various alleys from the High-street, and other elevated ground, open into this street. In rainy weather they carried with them each its respective stream of filth, and thus the Cowgate bore the aspect of a gigantic sewer receiving its tributary drains."

Again, in a medical report on Stirling, it is stated that the drains or sewers,--Scotticè, "sivers,"-are all open; that the sweepings of the public streets remain on the pavement many days; that the refuse from the Gaol, which contains, on an average, sixty-five persons, is floated down the "sivers" every second or third day, emitting, during the whole of its progress, the most offensive odour; that from the slaughterhouse, situated near the top of the town, the blood is allowed to flow down the main street; and that the sewers from the Castle, discharged into an open field, pollute the atmosphere to a dreadful degree.

As a contrast to this wholesale account, the examination of Mr. T. Thomson, of Clitheroe, affords a striking proof, how small, even in solitary dwellings, may