ing the Church Bible, Mary had never beheld anything | once an evidence of a degraded condition of being, so prodigious in the shape of a book before. But with the rest of the family she soon felt herself tolerably at ease. After that day Mary occasionally visited at Knightswood; every time with less discomfort to herself, and, according to Mark's observations, not wholly without profit; Nature had well done her part, and Mary was not ill-disposed to do her own. From the time of her acquaintance with my cousins she seldom worked in her garden, or gathered hog-weed for the rabbits, without her gloves, and absolutely rejected the use of a knife in eating fish. J. A. E. L. See, left but life enough and breathing room From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal. Is this Improvement? Where the human breed Till toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed, THESE lines are sufficiently beautiful to excuse, we trust, a rather indirect application to the subject they are made to introduce. It is not our present purpose to follow out the precise line of thought suggested by the poet, by examining the influence which the direction given to the stream of national industry, in particular districts of the country, has exercised upon the happiness and comfort of the labouring classes. We are not about to paint " the pale mechanic bending o'er his loom," or "childhood task'd as at Ixion's wheel." But, leaving these to other hands, or to another occasion, we are to direct the attention of our readers to a different class of influences, of even more general operation, which not less leave to the mechanic "but life enough and breathing room, the hunger and the hope of life to feel;" which as effectually steal the smile from the poor man's eyes, and the bloom from the cheek of labour. We are to speak of the unhealthy condition of their dwellings, occasioned by the want of pure air, and the constant presence of poisonous exhalations; and to show how this noxious agency shortens their lives, abridges their comforts, and, alas! vitiates and debases their characters. We do not know that there is anything from which we should draw more favourable auguries of a permanent amelioration in the character and condition of the poorer classes of our countrymen, than the appearance and growth among them of a desire for an improved style of accommodation in their dwellings,-for better means of maintaining cleanliness and comfort around their firesides. The indolent sluttishness which sits down contentedly in the midst of every description of filth, breathing a foul and contaminated atmosphere, through which the fair light of day struggles with difficulty, is at * Letters on the Unhealthy Condition of the Lower Class of Dwellings, especially in Large Towns, founded on the First Report of the Health of Towns Commission. By the Rev. Chas. Girdlestone, A.M. Rector of Alderley, Cheshire. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, Paternoster Row. 1845. But it both morally and physically, and the fruitful parent of still further degradation, becoming more hopeless of cure as it advances. The love of cleanliness is in itself a highly moral attribute-a virtue of no mean rank, and the direct source of a large portion of our enjoyment as sentient beings, susceptible, at every instant, of pleasurable or painful impressions from the objects around us. becomes invested with a still higher dignity and importance, when it is regarded in connexion with its moral effects-in its bearing upon the character and conduct of those by whom it is cultivated or disregarded. So highly are we led, from the evidence accumulated on the subject, to estimate its importance in this point of view, that we should scarcely hesitate to pronounce the general prevalence of cleanly or filthy habits, to be a decisive test of the moral character of the population of a district. The painful reflection to every benevolent mind, in connexion with this subject, is, that the vice of filth, with its attendant train of moral and physical evils, may be said to be, in the case of a large proportion of mankind, an inevitable circumstance of their condition: they cannot avoid it, or escape from it, if they would. The poor man cannot choose where he is to live; he cannot gratify himself by retreating to an airy. dry, and cheerful site, far from the presence of all offensive sights, and bour can do; he cannot pay for having pure water sounds, and smells, as his happier wealthy neighconveyed from a distance, and those things, the presence of which is offensive and injurious to health, carried away to a distance from his dwelling. He must be content to live where he can, and how he can, confining his ambition to the bare preservation of life, and never aspiring to the luxury of those decent enjoyments, the absence of which deprives life of its greatest charm. He is surrounded by influences, and, through all his which almost literally act over again, in his case, senses, brought into daily contact with objects, the tyranny of Mezentius, who chained a living man to a putrefying corpse. This wretched state of things is part of the tax which society has hitherto been in the practice of demanding, with most rigid severity, from those time that a compensating agency were set in mowho profit the least from her arrangements. It is tion-that those whose benefits from society have been large in comparison of their sacrifices for its tent, of the debt thus standing against them, by sake, should relieve themselves, to some small exother end of the scale; that they should try, if making an effort to reduce the anomaly at the possible, whether the world cannot be carried on be taken away from those to whom least is given. on a fairer principle of equality, so that less may gain them the means of barely living, have no time The poor, whose utmost labour is hardly sufficient to which might direct them to add to mere life some nor opportunity to acquire the knowledge or taste of those amenities which render it a source of enjoyment; nor have they the means of casting off the accumulating impurities which the congregation of human beings into large masses, in an advanced state of society, necessarily gathers around them, literally and metaphorically. This must be done for them by the rich and powerful, whose proper function it is; who are elevated above the mass for the very purpose, that, as their time and might do well to bear in mind, that it is to such labour are not wholly occupied, like those of the exertions on the part of others for it, as it refuses poor, in providing for their own sustenance, they to make in return, that it, whatever be its rank, is may devote them to exertions for the general good, indebted for the protection it enjoys, from encounand especially for the good of those whose circum-tering, in its daily walk, objects offensive to the stances put it out of their power to care properly for themselves. senses, corrupting to the mind, and fitted to offer revolting suggestions to the imagination. The desire for personal cleanliness, and decent Happily the attention of our legislators has, at and comfortable accommodation, is, we are per- length, been directed in good earnest to this subsuaded, instinctive in all men. No man would ject. A kindlier spirit of social sympathy is berather be dirty than clean,-would prefer a damp ginning to grow up among us. The possessors of house to a dry one, or a suffocating unwholesome rank and wealth appear to be learning to feel, that atmosphere to the pure breath of heaven. An the advantages which they enjoy involve responsiunconquerable indolence of disposition may, in bilities and impose duties, as well as confer opporsome cases, induce slovenly habits in persons who tunities of enjoyment. And surrounded, as every have not the excuse of want of means to keep rank in society, with the exception of the very themselves and their houses sufficiently clean; and lowest, now is, by the most refined and complicated in others, the force of strong prejudice, based upon appliances of luxury and gratification, we are beignorance and evil habits, may lead them obsti- coming sensible to the shame that there should be nately to reject, as disagreeable innovations, what- one class among us, in numbers equal to all the ever would improve their own condition, or that of rest, the arrangements for whose comfort continue their houses, in this respect; but, in a large pro- such as would disgrace the most barbarous age, portion of cases, it is the utter hopelessness of knowing nothing of civilization but the vices which attempting to struggle against the unfavourable it teaches, and conscious of its presence only by circumstances by which they are surrounded, the the bitter contrast every day presented to their exwant of room, the want of light, the want of drain-perience, between their own miserable debasement age, the want of water, the want of time, the want of strength, the want of money; it is these grievous and insurmountable wants which cause many a poor man and woman, who would have been respectable if they could, to become reconciled by degrees to what they began by loathing, until, at last, the poison which dries up the marrow in their bones, and stagnates the stream of life in their veins, penetrates into their very souls, and every feeling of delicacy and self-respect utterly and for ever disappears. There are few of those who live in easy and comfortable circumstances, who have not some general idea that there is at all times to be found, at no great distance from them, heaped together in the garrets and cellars of dark lanes and alleys, much that it would be disgusting to look upon, and not very safe to enter into close contact with. They are aware that every large town has its "mysteries," from which, however, they have no desire to lift off the veil. So long as their own immediate precincts remain unpolluted to the outward sense, they are satisfied. They adopt the legal maxim, "de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est ratio," forgetting that there is a vast difference between the inability to see that which is carefully looked for, and just contriving to escape seeing it by studiously looking the other way. They act like the housemaid who considers her work of cleaning completed when she has swept the dirt under the carpet. The subject is not an inviting one, certainly, nor does it present any pleasing objects of contemplation. It cannot be wondered that many should shrink from entering into its details. But" entire affection hateth nicer hands." The man who is intent upon doing good, will not turn back because there is a noisome slough between him and the object of his benevolence; and the fastidious delicacy which refuses to look narrowly into the unpleasing realities of the condition of the poor and wretched, in order to its improvement, and which, if it be not a mere mask for selfishness, is at best a very childish weakness, Things not seen are to be accounted as not existing. and the multiplied enjoyments of others. Let us not inquire too minutely, whether the benevolent feelings which have led to an increased attention on the part of the rich to the condition of the poor, be altogether unmixed with selfish considerations; whether a sense of danger has not been as powerful an incentive to philanthropic exertion, as a conviction of duty. Unquestionably there was ground for apprehension. A population increasing every day in numbers and in intellectual activity; sufficiently instructed, however ignorant of other things, in the physical power of their own masses; but feeling themselves connected by no common bond of sympathy with the rest of society; pressed by physical suffering; exposed to numberless corrupting and vitiating influences; their dwellings a stronghold in which disease and death held their perpetual seat, from which to issue forth at intervals, and spread desolation over the rest of the world; such a population moving about in hourly increasing swarms around and among them, could not but carry lively apprehensions of danger to the breasts of all who felt interested in the peaceful continuance of our social system. It is generally known that, a few years ago, in consequence of disclosures resulting from a variety of investigations into isolated points affecting the condition of the poorer classes, a Commission was appointed, containing the names of men of the highest distinction, both for rank and scientific acquirement, for the purpose of instituting a more general inquiry into the state of the people, chiefly as regards health, and morals in so far as affected by those circumstances by which health is affected, in large towns and populous districts. A first report of this Commission was published in 1844, and a second in the present year. Such documents, however, not being generally accessible, nor, when procured, thrown into a form well suited to gain the attention of general readers, it becomes almost essential to their utility, that they should undergo a condensing and sifting process, so as to present unmixed, and at a small cost, the really valuable matter which they contain-at least that which it most concerns the public to be acquainted with. This service has been well performed, in the present case, by Mr. Girdlestone, who has, in a series of letters, thrown into a very convenient form the most important results of the Commissioners' investigation, and has urged them upon the attention of the public with an affectionate earnestness well becoming his sacred office. Mr. Girdlestone treats his subject under the following general heads:-1. Sewerage and drainage. 2. Supply of water. 3. Receptacles of refuse filth. 4. Ventilation. And, after exhibiting the result of the evidence laid before the Commissioners on each of these branches of the inquiry, he sums up by a detail of striking facts illustrative of the influence exercised by the deplorable state of the towns and populous districts, in regard to these necessary arrangements, upon public morals, and by a brief suggestion of some of the more practicable remedies. The general results of the reports regarding the actual condition of the inhabitants of the districts referred to, are thus stated : "It is proved that the rate of sickness and mortality of the working classes, in our populous towns, is much greater than that of the same classes in the country districts, and much greater than that of those classes in the same towns where dwellings are better drained and better ventilated. It is proved that the greater liability of the working classes to the most afflictive and painful disorders does not arise from deficiency of food and clothing, but from their living usually, with no alternative, in narrow streets, confined courts, damp dwellings, and close chambers; undrained, unventilated, uncleansed. It is proved that they suffer the most severely in those cases where they spend the day in crowded workshops, or where they live in cellars, or sleep in rooms on the ground floor, or in chambers that have no chimney flue, or other vent to the vitiated air. It is proved that in such situations the average duration of human life is at least twenty years less than it otherwise might be; and that during this curtailed period of existence, the working power of those who live is seriously diminished, and much more their capacity for enjoyment, by a constant depression of health and spirits, and by the active attacks of fever, cholera, scrofula, and consumption. It is proved that this excess of mortality falls most heavily, first on the infantine portion of the community, and next on the heads of families between twenty and thirty years of age. It is proved that, in the metropolis alone, from twenty thousand to thirty thousand lives are thus wasted in each single year, with all the attendant misery of sickness, and sorrow, and want; owing to causes which may be easily obviated or removed. It is proved, that the burden which is thrown, by this excess of sickness and mortality, on the poor's rates, to say nothing of infirmaries and dispensaries, of friendly societies, and of private almsgiving, is such as to exceed the cost of effecting those improvements, which would suffice to make the average health of the working classes nearly equal to that of the rest of the community. It is proved that in the mere article of wasted manures, the refuse of a town, if duly collected and carried off, might, in most cases, be so applied as to repay the whole cost of sewerage, increasing the produce of the surrounding country, instead of saturating with pernicious moisture the ground on which the dwellings of the poorer classes stand, and defiling the air they breathe with pestilential vapours. And, finally, it is proved that, besides the waste of money, health, and life, incurred by the system now usually pursued in erecting the lower classes of dwellings in great towns where comfort, cleanliness, and decency are either not thought of at all, or are sacrificed to a shortsighted greediness of gain, there is also an incalculable amount of demoralization attributable to the same causes; and that, to say the least, an effectual bar is thereby put to the intellectual, moral, and religious improvement of this large portion of the community." The only consolation which the contemplation of so much misery admits of, is the assurance that it is not beyond the reach of remedy; nay, that it requires only a vigorous effort to make the remedy comparatively easy. "It is most abundantly proved," says Mr. Girdlestone, "that the evils which have been now laid bare are within the reach of remedy. To a great extent they may be removed in the case of dwellings already built, and they may be entirely obviated in those which shall be constructed henceforth. And these objects may be compassed by an expenditure, which is not only small as compared with the good to be accomplished, but which also may be made to repay itself. This, I say, is a most cheering circumstance; for, if we look at the enormous wealth concentrated in comparatively few hands, and securing to its possessors the command of this world's goods; and if we next consider how poor, in comparison, the great multitude of mankind remain, and how often the poor are sickly, and how early they are cut off by death, our hearts might well sink within us, if we could see no way of relief, short of equalizing the poor with the wealthy in the sumptuousness of their fare, and clothing, and abodes. But now we know, that neither these, nor yet immunity from labour, are the points which mainly make the difference. The rich man's abundance may expose him to as many diseases, arising from excess or indolence, as those which beset the poor man, owing to hard fare or scanty clothing. Let the labourer but have a decent home, built on a dry soil, well drained, and with all its putrefying refuse properly removed; let his dwelling have at least two bed-rooms above the ground floor, and let it have a good supply of pure water and fresh air; and there is evidence to show, that he is as likely to enjoy health and length of life, supposing that similar attention is paid to the place in which he does his work, as the most wealthy of his employers. And if he may be thus physically on a par with them--as who would not wish him to be?-there remains nothing to hinder him from being so also, as every Christian ought to be one with another, both morally and religiously." RURAL SKETCHES; WITH HINTS FOR PEDESTRIANS. THERE are some objects which the tourist will not fail to visit, presenting the same features, at all the three periods of which we have spoken. As he wanders along the road which winds gracefully, with its beautiful green edging and its rich hedge-rows, his eye will be attracted by the heavendirected spire of a village church, which had been previously hidden from him by the abundance of wood surrounding the village, and as a sudden turn in the road presents the whole of the venerable and interesting building to his view, he will feel the sentiments expressed by Wordsworth:- yew; the ancient grave-stones, with their short and simple "Hic Jacet" in old English letter, presenting a striking contrast to the verbose and fulsome epitaphs of modern times; and the nameless graves beneath which "The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep," he will be prepared to enter the building to notice more carefully what it contains. The first object which claims his attention as he enters is the font; and this is frequently of a much older date than the church itself--many Norman fonts are yet preserved where the churches have been once or again rebuilt. The windows probably contain stained glass in greater or less profusion, and the bright sunshine throws a warm many-hued stain on the pavement. In some churches he will find the stoup for holy water yet remaining at the entrance; on the south side of the chancel, the sedilia, formerly used by the priest, deacon, and sub-deacon, during part of the Divine service; eastward of this, the piscina; and opposite to the sedilia, in the north wall, the arch for the holy sepulchre. genius Cromwell might have, I know not. Certain, however, it is, that no man since Henry VIII. has contributed more to adorn this country with picturesque ruins. The difference between these two masters lay chiefly in the style of ruins in which they composed. Henry adorned his landscapes with the ruins of abbeys; Cromwell, with those of castles." The dungeons he will probably find half filled with rubbish and loose stones, rolled into them by idle boys. Many materials for profitable thought will be supplied him, in endeavouring to trace the probable age of different parts of the castle-this window has been inserted long after the original walls were built, and that tower also is an addition of later date. But there are other ruins which will draw the pedestrian from the road. In the midst of some lovely vale, fertile as lovely, and peaceful as fertile; down which winds a crystal stream, the haunt of the trout; whose meadows seem enriched with an almost unaccountable and superabundant fruitfulness-lo! in the midst of this paradise, this Eden of luxuriant growth, rises the fair tower of a despoiled and desecrated abbey. The ancient charity-box is yet remaining in Hastily crossing the ancient stone bridge thrown some churches; and, of rarer occurrence, as most across the stream, for which we are in all proof them are obliterated by repeated coats of white-bability indebted to the monks, he will be soon wash, are the fresco paintings, with which the walls were anciently covered. Some churches have chantry chapels attached to them, and in very many are fine monumental effigies, once rich with "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," but, now, alas! mutilated and defaced. The bells are frequently of an early period, and containing inscriptions of a religious nature. These remarks of course apply chiefly to those churches which were built before the Reformation. Some, of great antiquity, will be easily recognised as Anglo-Norman by the massy piers, the semicircular arches, the round-headed doorways, with their rich mouldings, of which the chevron is the most common, and the broad buttress, scarcely projecting from the wall. To the Norman style succeeded the Early-English, and subsequently the Decorated, and the Florid or Perpendicular, all of which are of a lighter and more elegant character, distinguished by pointed arches. These three latter styles were successively used from the reign of Stephen to the commencement of that of Henry VIII. Occasionally, too, the pedestrian's attention will be drawn to the ruined castle, whose towers and battlements frown over the neighbouring valley; and on approaching it, he will find no traces of the draw-bridge, the moat nearly filled by a luxuriant crop of nettles and thistles, and the walls much rent, affording in their fissures sufficient nourishment for trees which have been propagated from seeds conveyed thither by the birds, while other parts appear to be sustained by the matted ivy, so interwoven as to support fragments which might otherwise endanger his safety. Ön entering the gloomy gateway, where the portcullis once hung, and the warden kept strict watch, he is forcibly struck by the change wrought in our social condition since the time when baron waged war against baron, or at a later period, when the unnatural strife of the Roses was carried on, or, still more recently, when the fair plains of England were converted into battle-fields in the great Rebellion. "What share of picturesque treading the rich greensward which conducts him to the west front of the abbey. This, the principal entrance, was usually adorned with sculpture, often with the Virgin and Child, "the glorious company of the Apostles," windows with graceful mouldings, and a very highly ornamented doorway; and, high over all, the gable is enriched by an elaborately sculptured cross. Entering the nave, whose "long drawn aisles" give such imposing effect to the clustered piers, how great is the regret that such noble workmanship, the produce of an age which has been reviled as dark and ignorant by one inferior to it in real and solid architectural magnificence-should have been desecrated and despoiled, and allowed to decay. The grass now occupies the place of the variegated pavement; the ivy hangs in the window once filled with storied pictures and sacred emblems; the rain and the hail, and the rough winter's wind, beat in where the fretted roof was so skilfully hung; rude feet trample on the tombs of the abbot and the baron-their armorial bearings defaced, their simple inscriptions obliterated. The abbot's house, where royal and noble guests were entertained on their journeyings, in some cases is converted into a residence for the hind or the steward; the refectory and the dormitory are the resort of bats and owls and unclean birds; the mortuary chapels are thickly overgrown with the nettle and the thistle; the chapter-house, where the cowled monks assembled for grave capitular deliberation, and for the government of their abbey, is perhaps now used as a mere shed for the cattle who graze on the abbey-lands; and the cloisters, where formerly they walked, are strewed with rubbish and loose stones-a miserable spectacle, when contrasted with the judgment we may form of what they have been, by the cunning workmanship displayed in the groined roof, the airy and graceful column, and the elegant window, so rich in beautiful tracery, which yet remain to mock their present desolation and decay. S. J. Rev. W. Gilpin. |