tence, toiling in musty, airless rooms, where the sunshine, almost as necessary as pure air for the health, never penetrates.

To remedy these immense evils a radical change will be needed in the construction of our large towns, and in the habits of the citizens. Every care that enlightenment and philanthrophy can suggest, should be expended in the remodeling of our old towns and poors' quarters. No new street should be allowed to be built in a large city, of less than a certain width, in proportion to the supply of fresh air; and in those which have been bequeathed us by our ancestors, we should never rest till we have succeeded in altering them to a healthy standard. But there is nothing perhaps of so much importance, or which is so totally neglected in the poorer districts, as that open spaces should be left at intervals, in the midst of the most crowded parts, to serve as reservoirs of fresh air. These small parks should be simply covered with grass, with a few trees here and there, whose healthy effect in decarbonising the atmosphere is shown by science; and whose flourishing condition would be a test of the salubrity of the air around. Unfenced by envious railings, they should be freely open to all. Although all the community, young and old, would benefit by such spaces, yet to none would they be so great a boon, nay, so absolutely necessary, as to the children. These have as yet no business to occupy their day, and it must be spent in play somewhere, whether in the filthy musty rooms, or in the dangerous thoroughfares.

One's heart sickens over the thought of a childhood spent in such places. No wonder that thus they become spectres instead of children; that about two-thirds of them die of scrofulous diseases, and that the rest grow up withered and stunted, with watery blood and cold dull hearts. Shall we love and care for our children (for all children are ours as belonging to our common humanity) less than for the animals and plants? In truth it seems so, when we observe, as we often do, in large towns, public gardens, or meadows, from which the children of the poor at least, are totally excluded, whether for the sake of a few wretched plants, or from mere caprice.

To the feeling heart there is no spectacle more delightful, than that of healthy and happy children sporting on the grass, and at every breath and every frolic, laying in stores of health, which in after years shall bless themselves and the city which gave them birth. There is no spectacle so miserable, as that of the pale, dirty, spectres of the streets, building mudpies, peevish and quarrelsome, the future tenants of the hospitals and gaols. As long as the children have the streets alone to play in, there is no hope for them. The high streets are ever dangerous, and on this account they are often kept at home by their parents.

Nor is it of much use that there should be parks and gardens, outside the city, even though it be of moderate size. Little children can go but a short distance to seek their play-ground, and if it be not close at hand, they will confine themselves to the puddles before the door. One grass park in the middle of their homes, is to the children of more value than all the churches, monuments, or institutions of the city.

Besides the making of these lungs to the town, the widening of the strictured streets, and the improvement of the houses everything should

be done to bring the inhabitants as much as possible into the open air All of us live far too much in the house; but the poor artizan, at his constant sedentary employment, is almost entombed in it. That man is a chief benefactor to his species, who by shortening the working hours, by the discovery of means of amusement, social pleasures, or any other inducements, prevails on his fellow citizens, to spend as much of their time as possible in the open air. Any human being who spends his or her life without passing a considerable portion of each day in the open air, lives a life of sin. The open heavens are nature's temple, and those who do not reverence her, she will not reverence. We should endeavour as much as possible to carry our enjoyments and our pursuits, nay, as far as may be, our meals and our studies into the open air.

The close domestic life for which our country is so proverbial, is much less healthy in this respect than that of the continent, where the inhabitants of town and country often almost live in the open air, taking for months together, many of their meals, and most of their social pleasures in it. It is not the difference of climate nearly so much as the difference of manners, which prevents us from adopting such admirable customs.

In the present sickly state of society, especially among the poorer classes, the poor townsman works during the whole day, at a sedentary trade, which confines him to the house; and then instead of being able to pass the evening in the open air, which might make amends for the unhealthy day, he spends it either at home, in the tavern, or in some place of public amusement, as the theatre, whose pestilential atmosphere is well known.

Evening lectures and mechanics' institutes, good though they be, will not atone for the want of the open air. Amusements are as necessary for man as instruction, and form no less important a part of his real duty; for without joy and hilarity, the man and the child will alike become diseased. It is a mistake too to suppose, that a taste for amusements exists naturally, while one for information requires to be cultivated. The taste for amusement and the pleasure derived from it, need constant cultivation through life, both by the individual and the society, and those who neglect this will surely suffer.

Nothing is more hurtful to man's health, physical and moral, than an austere, serious state of mind, which cannot be amused, and is constantly prone to gloomy views. This serious cast of mind is one of the great evils in our national character, especially in the Scotch; our theory of life, favoured by the Christian religion, is a serious one; we cannot understand the equal beauty and truth of the laughing philosophy, and this has the most unhealthy effect on both mind and body.

On

There is nothing in which this serious view of life operates more banefully, than in the influence it has on the mode of keeping the Sunday. This day is our workman's only holiday; the day in which his weary labours have a pause, and he has time to enjoy the fruits of his toils. this day he should lay in a stock of health, happiness, and content, to carry him through the week, to delight him in his retrospect and prospect. Released from the necessities of his sedentary life, he should spend his Sunday entirely in the open air-in the country, if possible, bracing his

lungs and limbs by the unwonted exercise. Having one day's respite from the serious monotonous life of work, his Sunday should be devoted to amusement, gaiety, and hilarity, as boisterous, as free and unrestrained, as possible. With every hearty laugh the burden of his cares will be lightened, and his heart will open to the love of his fellow creatures. Instead of this, the admirable and religious manner in which the Sunday is spent, for the most part, on the continent, how sad and melancholy is our Sunday to him who has an insight into the laws of health, physical and oral, and an interest in the welfare of his fellow beings.

Instead of the working classes being exhorted, and induced by every jemptation of cheap and numerous railway trains, public gardens, and promenades, with musical bands and various social amusements, (for it requires no slight inducements to prevail on a pale and sickly frame to make any effort for its own regeneration) to spend their whole day in the open country air; they are pressed by every means into the church service, amusements are forbidden, and even to go out to breathe the fresh air, is in many parts, especially in Scotland, scarcely thought proper. In the latter country, especially, all thoughts of the mind, all acts of the body lie under a restraint more galling to many, than even the week-day confinement. The thoughts, it is said, should then be serious, the bodily deportment sober and sedate. No amusements are permitted, even to sing or whistle is looked upon as a sacrilege. Even the little children are prevented from playing, and their toys lie idle. Many of those whose bodies have been pining in narrow rooms the whole week, and who would now, if left to nature, burst into the free air with the exuberant delight of school-boys, spend their day at church, still sedentary, still serious.

But far more of the poor inhabitants of our large towns, do not go to church, as they must have excitement; and where do the unfortunates, ashamed to be seen abroad, resort to? To the tavern, where they consume nearly as much whiskey on the Sunday, as on all the rest of the week together. I have no hesitation in saying, that our Sunday is one of the chief causes of the drunkenness in our large towns, for which the Scotch are proverbial, and which is one of the greatest national causes of disease and misery. In the country, and to the hardy rustic, the evil effect of this day is not so manifest, but to the blighted artizan of the city, it is destructive. Alas! how does the heart which has rejoiced over be happy continental Sunday, sadden at the contrast!

But we should not only grieve at such things, but seek to enforce the reverence for the natural laws, which have been neglected. We should earnestly endeavour to make it clearly understood, that the moral and physical laws, are exactly of equal sacredness, and that to be ignorant of, or to break either of them, is equally culpable. Thus we must recognise that it is great sin for any man, whose body from confinement during the week, requires fresh air and exercise, to go to church on a Sunday; it is no less a sin in those who endeavour to induce him to do so, or throw obstacles in the path of his physical duties, in defiance of the interests of his being. I say these things, in the deep conviction that unless all of us learn to reverence the physical, as much as the moral interests, of ourselves and our neighbours, there is no safety for man.

Is the question of the air we breathe a slight matter, or one easily solved? Is the construction and health of our large towns, and their teeming populations, each individual with a claim on our sympathy, which cannot be over-estimated, a trivial thing, which is to be left to the doctors, the sanitarians, and those who busy their heads with these simple physical questions? A simple question truly, the false solution of which has entailed on us such an infinity of evils, such a labyrinth and abyss of miseries, that it will require the most strenuous untiring efforts of mankind for generations, with all the genius and self-devotion of the wisest and most persevering men, to enable us in part to escape. It will not be in a day, scarcely in a century, that men will recover from the contempt and neglect that have been shown to the body and all its requirements.

Besides the above mentioned means for ensuring a supply of fresh air in a town, every precaution should be taken to prevent its contamination by noxious elements. The most baneful and important of these in our large towns is the smoke, whether from private houses or from public works. This pollutes the air by poisonous gases, and still more by the small particles of coal and soot, so that the carbon enters into the very core of the citizens. No smoking factory should be tolerated in a large town; every one should be forced to consume its own smoke. Until this is done, there is no safety for any of the inhabitants, but more especially for the poorer classes, who dwell in the neighbourhood of these sooty giants, more pestilential than the dragons of old. Society should by common consent, enforce the consumption of the smoke, which could be easily accomplished, and should not rest till this be obtained. If they cannot afford to change these things, can they better afford to forfeit their own or their neighbours' lives by them? There is never a gain by that carelessness and want of attention, which neglects the laws of health in their full perfection. Whenever any individual's health or forces suffer, there is a dead loss in every way to society, as well as to himself, and the in as well as the penalty must be shared by all.

None of the exhalations in a town, whether from graveyards or sewers, are, I believe, nearly so fatal to health as smoke; although the former also, are often very injurious, and should be carefully guarded against. But the smoke in some towns, especially in London, is ruinous to the health and strength of almost every one who dwells amid it. In this town, there are but few public factories, and the chief part of the smoke comes from private houses. Until this be got rid of, every human being who lives in London, will suffer more or less in health, and the whole race of its inhabitants must be deteriorated. It has been shown, I believe, to be perfectly practicable, by conducting the smoke from the different houses in each row into a common vent, and there consuming it, to prevent any of these deleterious sooty particles from escaping into the air. Scarcely anything would be of equal value to the town as such a measure, if universally adopted.

Much has been done of late years to improve the ventilation of the houses of the rich, and of those parts of public institutions, which are set apart for them. But how little in either respect has been done for the poor! How pestilential are the upper galleries of our theatres! How

many a fever and consumption might be traced to them! How wretched and unwholesome are the rooms of their own houses! How little has been done to make themselves feel the sovereign importance of fresh air, the religion and duty which they owe to their bodies! It is seldom that the women among the poorer classes in the large towns ever leave their houses, except on necessary errands, and when they thus become diseased, a constitutional walk is beyond the power of their medical adviser to obtain.

But religion and duty form but one part of our lives, not one whit superior in importance to others. A life guided by principle alone or chiefly, is an imperfect one, and by no means the ideal of humanity, which with its innate demand for freedom, cannot bear to feel itself the slave of laws, and is spoiled in its completeness and beauty by such a feeling.

Thus there should be inducements of pleasure, happiness, and spontaneous choice, to lead us along the paths of duty; and in the matter of air and exercise, it is not to be expected or desired, that man or woman should take them merely on principle or as a duty. They are too often prescribed as medicines, like the moral virtues, without means being taken to combine their benefits with the happy freedom of spontaneous choice, without which all medicines or duties are imperfect.

Therefore, constant habit from early infancy, teaching us to regard fresh air as a necessary of life; all manner of inducements and social pleasures linked with the idea of the open air, should combine with the recognition of our religious and dutiful relation to it, to make men eagerly seek after it, in every condition and circumstance of life.

There is another great reason of the awful degradation of our poor townsmen. It is the separation between them and the richer classes. Had there been any bond of union, any connection of intimacy, of friendship, of social enjoyment; any heart sympathy or understanding between them, could the unfortunate poor have got into such a wretched state? Had the foot of the wealthy often sought the streets, had it ever passed the threshold of the poor, and beheld the stifling squalor behind it, had his sympathies been mixed with those of his fellow-being in but an infinitesimal proportion of that amount which our common humanity demands, could these evils have remained so? No; it is in great part because the poor have been excluded from our friendship and sympathies, because we are class conventionalists, and not real men, because we have no communion with them at home or abroad, that there have arisen such miserable evils in their state. Neither physically nor morally, can the poor be sufficiently elevated, save by the habitual mingling among them, for mutual instruction and sympathy, of those who have more time and opportunity to cultivate their various faculties.