eruptions, with rickety limbs, and scrofula written in every feature, playing about among the gutters, if such beings can be said to play at all! Men and women, still pale, and all prematurely old and haggard, with the furrows of care ploughed deep in their brows, and a common expression of despondence and anxiety. Here we see the deep yellow hue of incurable liver disease, brought on probably by intemperate habits; there the puffy watery face that tells of the kidneys degenerated from similar causes; next the hollow ghastly visage of the consumptive, the labouring chest of the asthmatic, or the defaced features of the unhappy victim of syphilis. Wherever we go, care, squalidness, and disease, meet our eyes.

From such a scene, let us go with what appetites we may, to admire the beauties of the city, the works of art, magnificent buildings, gardens, and institutions, of which the wealthier citizen is so proud. Alas! how little compensation can these offer for the human ruins we have been contemplating! The splendid edifices and luxuriant gardens, where the happier children of the rich are fenced from all harm, and allowed to grow up in the sunshine, like the young flowers, contrast too painfully with the narrow filthy streets, dilapidated houses, and scrofulous features of the unfortunate little ones, whose playground is the kennel and crowded thoroughfare, fraught with so many dangers.

Can we be contented with bestowing our thoughts and our expenditure in beautifying the more fortunate parts of our cities, in erecting monuments to the dead, and grand buildings for the wonder and admiration of the stranger, while we thus neglect our poorer living brethren? Shall we take pride and glory in our towns, in whose secret recesses, which the stranger cares not to see, and which the citizen avoids as an eye-sore and focus of infection, corruption riots at its pleasure? One town vies with another in its beauties, natural and artificial, but does any fully feel the noble aspiration to excel, not in architectural beauties alone, but in the dutiful and loving provision made for the physical wellbeing of all its citizens? Should we not earnestly feel the desire to be able to pass ourselves and to conduct the stranger, not through magnificent squares or splendid streets alone, but through every part, every lane and alley, and to feel that there is none we are ashamed to meet, none which our brotherly sympathies have not entered, and invested with a peculiar and equal beauty?

How very far are we at present from so blessed a condition! There is not a large town in the country which is not a disgrace to our nation; not one which does not cry out to heaven against us. There is not one

which is even moderately healthy; not one which is not hideously diseased. If men had given to their own bodies, or to the bodies of their fellow beings, the thousandth part of the devoted attention and enthusiasm they have given to their souls, should we have come to this!

Our ancestors knew little about the laws of health. They built their streets narrow, their chambers small; they huddled their buildings as closely together as possible, leaving few if any open spaces, either as squares or gardens, which are the lungs of a large town without which it must languish and suffocate.

Our better informed generation builds in a more healthy manner, although among us too, there is often little or no provision made for free air, but our improvements are almost entirely confined to the quarters of the rich. The poor succeed to the houses we have long abandoned, which are now, besides their radical defects, rendered ten times as unhealthy by their old age, the surrounding extension of the city, and their overcrowded population. Hence these quarters are the focus of disease; no one abides in them for any time without being destroyed physically and morally; the unhappy children, if not cut off, as the great majority of them are, during the first few years of life, grow up pale, weak, vicious, criminal; the healthiest stock becomes in a few generations extinct, and the vacuum thus created is filled by new healthy victims, who are soon brought through the tedious chronic processes of destruction to a similar end; syphilis and typhus have it here all to themselves, and spread from hence over the whole city.

What avail all the exhortations of the preacher, or of the moralist; what our penal codes and our hospitals, while these things remain so? If the town be itself diseased, nothing which lives in it will be healthy. Will all the prayers ever poured out under the skies widen these streets one inch? will all the penal codes, all the medicines that are, or shall be known to man, make up for the want of the air of heaven? It is good to bind up the bleeding heart, to console the sufferer; it is good to cure disease, when a cure is possible, but it is better that the suffering or disease should never have existed.

What then can we do to remedy this hideous blot on our civilisation, to restore to health our great towns, and thus be able to enjoy the freedom of our cities, and inspire the fresh air ourselves without the remorseful consciousness, that our neighbours are gasping, languishing, and dying, for the want of it? For it is pure air which our large cities especially require; it is the want of that, which most of all destroys them; and the admission of it to every part is the grand problem of the physical reformer. No other immediate cause of disease, among the innumerable host which operate in large cities, is at the present day nearly so important. Others may more attract our attention and are better recognised, because they are more palpable; but this invisible agent, with its insidious chemistry, saps the foundations of our being, while it eludes our observation. In its subtle menstruum how many poisons enter into our frames? Every infection, noxious exhalation, and destroying product of destruction, by its agency penetrates to our inmost bosoms, and taints us at the core.

No living thing, plant, animal, or human being, can live in a tainted atmosphere, or can have health or enjoyment, unless pure air and sunshine have free admission to it. Hence the stunted diseased state of the scattered trees in the midst of a crowded city. Do we think that a man can flourish, where a plant languishes? But even these plants have many advantages over the poor man. They live at least in the open air so as to obtain the greatest benefit possible from the atmosphere, impure as it is; while he is confined to the house, nearly the whole of his exis

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