there is one observation necessary, and that is, the necessity of a special surveillance on the part of the government over all establishments, whether purely sanitary or designed for moral reformation. It is unnecessary to enter on a subject so large as the abuse of charities, and it would be painful to point out the pernicious results of misdirected philanthropy; but we feel assured that no beneficial effects can ever be produced unless private benevolence be directed by those who have capacity and opportunity for observing the tendency of measures, which, in the present state of our knowledge, can only be regarded as experimental. We do not expect that any means can ever be devised to extirpate the evil we have been describing. But what moralist hopes to banish vice from the universe? What legislator expects to remove crime completely? What physician professes to cure all disease? In society we must be content to alleviate where we cannot change, and to do a portion of good even where we cannot wholly remove evil.

We have bestowed so large a space on Duchatelet's account of the moral evils in the European capitals, that we must run lightly over the physical disadvantages. The subject of the watering and sewerage of cities, however, is one of such universal importance, and has recently occupied so large a share of public attention, that we must not pass it over too lightly. The source of the evils to which attention must be directed is simply that every body expects more from a river than it can possibly perform without artificial aid. No one is ignorant of the state of the Seine and its inadequacy to the purposes of Paris, but few seem to know how much the noble Thames is abused, or how great is the inconsistency in the objects to which its streams are applied. From the earliest ages the cleansing of lay-stalls and sewers has been an important part of civic economy, but it is only in recent days that any thing more has been regarded than the immediate removal of noxious matter. Two very important considerations, however, are now beginning to force themselves on public attention; the pollution of the waters which are made the final recep-tacle of the sewers, and the waste of matters available and useful in agriculture.

A moment's thought will be sufficient to convince any person that the water of the Thames, into which so many common sewers, so many washings from manufactories, and so many impurities of every kind, are conveyed, must contain various matters in mechanical suspension, or chemically combined with it, which tend to render it unfit for domestic purposes or internal use. Its deleterious and disgusting properties were proved beyond contradiction before a committee of the House of Commons ten

years ago, yet the water companies continue to supply this fluid, only taking care to remove the coarser sediment, which, after all, is the least injurious. To the amount of impurities must be added the influence of the tide; the stream of the Seine, as Duchatelet has shown, is adequate to the removal of Parisian impurities, and the Thames would assuredly supply a sufficient force of water for cleansing its own channel; but, owing to the tide, impurities are not carried down the river, they oscillate for a considerable time in the tide-way, and, as far as ordinary observation goes, it would appear that the actual change of waters in the river is a process far more slow than is usually imagined.

The methods by which the water companies have tried to remedy these evils are subsidence and filtration. The inadequacy of the former may be shown in a few words; though animal impurities, held in mechanical solution, would be deposited as a sediment, soluble salts would be still held in suspension, and, as Dr. Bostock has proved, they would be increased fourfold in quantity. Filtration is a more effective process of purification, but numerous experiments prove that it is not a complete cure even under the most favourable circumstances, and that adequate filtration would entail a greater expense than the measures by which the evil could be effectually prevented.

Mr. John Martin, the celebrated painter, has proposed the following plan, which will at once be seen to be both practicable and adequate.

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“I propose that, on the north bank, and for the western extremity of London, a receptacle should be formed above Vauxhall Bridge, for the purpose of receiving the King's Scholars' Pond sewage, and all the other minor drainage of that quarter. For the body of the city, a grand sewer must be formed, to commence about the bottom of College Street, Westminster, near Millbank, running parallel with the bank of the river, and receiving all the drainage from the north part of the metropolis, which now enters the Thames. This grand sewer should be constructed of either granite or iron, the top forming a quay, or line of wharfs, which should be above the highest possible tide, so as to secure the houses upon it from inundation, where the banks are now so low as to subject them to it. The sewer should also increase in depth as it continues its course towards the Tower, where it should turn off, using the moat if permitted. In the event of that not being allowed, it would pass round the moat, behind the London Dock, along Ratcliffe Highway, Brook Street, and the intermediate street, to the first convenient space near the Regent's Canal, where the grand receptacle should be established for the whole drainage.

"For the south side of the river the same plan should be adopted, commencing near Vauxhall Bridge, passing along the bank of the river to Pickle-Herring Stairs; then branching off through Rotherhithe to any

convenient spot adjoining the Grand Surrey Canal, where the grand receptacle for the south side will be constructed, on the same plan, and for the same purpose, as the receptacle near the Regent's Canal on the north.

"Provisions will be made for preventing the choking or bursting of the great sewers, particularly that on the north bank, during extraordinary land-floods-and also for clearing their interior from any obstruction that may occur. The first object is to be accomplished by having, in the side of the great sewer, next to the river, and at the upper part, opposite the end of each great street drain, a flood-gate, nearly six feet in length; so that if the sewage should ever rise so high, it would at once escape into the river. To afford facility for cleansing each great covered sewer, there should be large flood-gates to the depth of the sewer, to be opened when necessary.

"The second object will be effected by the erection of a light iron gallery, about three feet wide, and six feet and a half from the top of the drain, to be supported on one side by the wall towards the river, and on the other by suspending light iron rods from the roof. A man would pass along this gallery, carrying a safety lamp, to see and remove any obstructions that might accidentally have occurred in the sewer. The entrance to this gallery should be through the smaller flood-gates before mentioned, in the side next to the river, and they should be left open while the man is in the sewer, to admit some portion of light and air.

"The depth of the great covered sewer would be twelve feet from the highest high-water mark known to the base of the sewer. The declination should be twelve inches in the mile generally, and eighteen inches where, by its course, it takes one or two turns. By this arrangement the bottom of the great sewer will be sixteen feet above low water." p. 21.

The first objection to the adoption of this plan is its cost; but we are persuaded that the supply of manure to the agricultural districts would very soon repay the original outlay. The manufacture of poudrette at Paris has been found very lucrative, and Duchatelet has shown very clearly, that it may be prepared and transported, not only without danger but without producing any sensible inconvenience. In fact, those who are engaged in the manufacture at Montfaucon enjoy more average health than the ordinary class of labourers, and are proverbially less exposed to the influence of epidemic disease.

In the transportation of this manure, however, there are some dangers to be dreaded; it is a substance that rapidly absorbs moisture, and when once partially saturated with wet, it ferments, and disengages deleterious exhalations. Duchatelet thinks that these evils may be in a great degree remedied by a mixture of carbonate of lime from the gypsum quarries with the poudrette, a mixture actually used in the manufacture of urate, one of the most active manures known. But Mr. Martin's plan

affords means for a more efficacious remedy; the liquid portion may be removed without danger or inconvenience by a system of moveable tanks with air-tight covers, and the transport either by canal or cart would be manifestly very easy. The solid portion, when desiccated into poudrette, might be subjected to heavy pressure until it was totally deprived of air and moisture; in this state it might be removed either in casks or cubic cases to any distance.

Countless experiments prove that no manure is more fertilizing than that which is daily wasted in enormous quantities by the neglect of sewerage in London; it is notorious, that what now produces disgust and disease might be made a source of wealth and growth. We have permission to insert a letter from an eminent agriculturist, who has made a long series of experiments on soils and manures; his name we are not at liberty to mention, but our readers may be assured that he is one of the few who has made a fortune by farming, and in the present state of agriculture we could give no better proof of his ability.

"My attention was first called to the subject by observing the effect of manured water in my flower-garden. The drains from the glebe and charter school fall into a ditch that runs at the lower end of my garden-wall, and forms a pool farther down the hill. My boys, weary of going to fill their watering pots at the pump, broke a hole in the wall, and made a dam across the ditch, from which they got all the water required for the garden. I had soon the best flowers and vegetables in the country; yet there was nothing offensive to the smell, for the practice had been continued several years before it was even suspected by myself, my wife, or my daughters, who are, as you know, enthusiastic florists.

"I applied liquid manure by carts similar to those used for watering London, and found it far superior to bone dust, especially for the turnip and rape crops. If used in large quantities it will make the ground too rich for corn. Solid animal manure is best used in the form of poudrette,' but the drying is no easy process; I have tried some experiments with compression, and as far as my defective means went, I found it efficacious.

"Pure urate is not as valuable as stercorate, or lime saturated with liquid manure of every kind, but either is superior to powdered bone, and equal, at least, to the best supply from the stable. .

"Lime soon destroys all unpleasant effluvia, and where this cannot be easily had, the manure may be ploughed in as fast as it is spread. "The fertilizing effects of the liquid manure does not continue more than a season, but the beneficial effects of the solid matter continue for several years.

We have now shown, that what has been generally regarded as the chief nuisance of the metropolis, may be made the means of

effecting benefit to the country, and we have pointed out the urgent necessity of immediate attention to the subject. Both the moral and physical evils incident to large towns require early and constant watchfulness, but remedial measures can only be efficacious when they are the result of long and careful observation. We have taken the most prominent moral evil and the most marked physical evil, and we have seen that to both the same observation applies, namely, individual interference without a fixed plan aggravates the evil it professes to cure, or suggests a remedy worse than the disease. We want a board of health and morals, to superintend this vast metropolis; until that is established there can be no systematic operations, one set of men will be working in direct opposition to another, charity may diffuse poison instead of food, and benevolence produce the worst effects of satanic misanthropy.

There is no use in dwelling further on subjects so repulsive as those to which we have been now compelled by our strong sense of public duty; the evils are inherent in society, they are extensive in their influences, and, when uncontrolled, they are fatal in their consequences; but while we have not disguised their magnitude, we have shown that there is nothing either in the moral or the physical peril that need daunt the philanthropist or the legislator; we have shown to both the elements of good in the midst of evil; we have intimated the means of redress; but again and again we must repeat that accurate and minute investigations are the only sure guides to remedial measures, and that in nothing so much as in the social constitution is the Baconian aphorism more strongly exemplified, that KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

VOL. XIX. NO. XXXVIII.

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