the structural improvements which the rich have been taught by the precepts of the sanitarians to carry out for the sake of their own health and comfort, have been destructive to the health and comfort of their poorer neighbours. Not far from the spot where this remark is penned, there is a dell penetrated by a stream. Along its edge there had been originally a rural village, which, as a neighbouring town pressed nearer towards it, gradually enlarged itself for the accommodation of the artisans who found employment there. The newest and most aristocratic portion of the town now crowns the neighbouring bank-the village has swollen to a crowded, dirty suburb. The stream, in which old people remember to have trouted, is as black as ink, and many a bubbling circle ripples its surface, which rural children at first sight mistake for the leaping of little fishes, but which the experienced neighbours know to be the escape of mephitic gases. Now, this suburb, uncleanly as it is, has not created this dire pollution; its uncleanness has not taken that direction; for it has been left to itself, and consequently does not possess a hydraulic organisation for the removal of impurities. But the handsome houses on the top of the bank are cleansed and drained in the most skilful and effective manner, and it is from their impurities that the stream is polluted, and renders the dirty suburb more dirty and more insalubrious than it would ever have been had it not been near an aristocratic district. Surely a case like this is one for protection; and if means were taken for the removal of the foulness sent down by the upper ranks, it could scarcely be counted an interference with the rights or the independence of the lower.

Throughout our large towns the domiciliary position of the poorer classes in general is only too closely in parallel to the instance we have given. That they should congregate in towns, is only another way of saying that they must live where they find the means of living. But when the condition of all the dwellings for them is, that they have no internal arrange

ments for the removal of impurities -no external drainage, no ventilation-that there is dampness within and miasma all around them outside

what can the most active, cleanly, tidy domestic managers do to counteract such a heavy pressure towards filth and degradation? One is surprised at the rapid facility with which those brought up to the air of the mountain, and the sights and smells of nature, assimilate themselves to the filth and squalor of the poor man's town; but they must do it, and, for their peace and comparative happiness, the sooner all qualms are gone the better. So the immigrants to such spots, should they have any remnant of purity in their nature, must see it decay within themselves, and behold their offspring brought up without it-animals naturalised to the human rat-holes in which they crowd. The most intelligent of the working-classes proclaim that they could afford to hire clean and salubrious houses, if they could get them at their true money-value-at a value proportioned to that which the middle-classes pay for their houses. But the law of supply and demand cannot be brought to bear on house property as it does on hardware and woollens. Competition cannot always get a sphere for its exercise and though the capital is at hand which might supply small cleanly houses, the means of investing it may not be accessible. In many places the whole area of a manufacturing town belongs to one person or one company, and the inhabitants are as entirely at their mercy for the houses they are to live in, as the Sutherland tenants are at the mercy of their ducal landlord for the size and tenure of the farms which he thinks proper to let on his domains. Even where there are many house owners, they have a monopoly which shuts out competition. Their houses, such as they are, exist, and are filled with tenants at a rent as high as such tenants could pay for the best kind of houses. Why, then, should any one of these landlords trouble himself with improvements? A new man might be tempted to come among them, and undersell them by offering

a better article for the money; but they hold the ground-they possess the area of the city there is no room for the competitor.

The landlords of poor people's town-houses are a peculiar and not an amiable class. Over and over again, in fictitious literature, they have been called on the stage as the natural oppressors of virtuous poverty, and the cruel aggravators of misfortune. The pet hypocrite and scoundrel in Dickens's last fiction is one of this class. There would not be such a special run upon this order of small capitalists, as distinguished from others, if their peculiar trade did not afford some characteristic to suit the novelist's purpose; and so it does. A landlord of this class to obtain his proper returns must generally be an oppressor. Hence this kind of investment is shunned by men whose feelings or whose tastes revolt at putting on the screw. It naturally falls, therefore, to those whose dispositions are adapted to it; and they, as is always the case with a trade requiring peculiar qualifications, bad or good, of course clear all the larger a profit by their partial monopoly.

We have to reflect but a moment on the peculiar character of the business to see how this must be. A man need not, necessarily, have to be oppressive and coercive though his dealings in the way of business be with the poorest creatures. It is pitiful enough to see the halfpenny parcels of tea and sugar, on the counter of perhaps an affluent capitalist, whose shop is in a poor and crowded district, and to reflect on the close battle for life which these slender purchases imply, and the hard destiny to which they can prove but a faint alleviation. But there is no oppression done, though the grocer may be deriving a large profit in that class of business, and perhaps keeps his carriage at the sunnier end of the town-the halfpenny is put down and the tiny parcel removed, and so the transaction is over. landlord, however, must give credit, though it may be of the shortest he has, therefore, always the difficulty, and with the difficulty some

The

times the cruelty, of extracting payment for his commodity after it has been,as it were, consumed. If he have let his house, for a term, to a man in good work and repute-though the tenant should immediately turn dissipated and be dismissed, yet the landlord must let him enjoy the occupancy to the end of the term. Hence the landlords of the houses of the city poor are generally men of a very vigilant habit, with inexorable wills, wherever their interest is concerned, and hearts tempered and hardened to the functions they have undertaken. It is not from such men that we are to expect enlightened schemes of sanitary reform. They have in many instances, indeed, brought their influence to bear with effect against local efforts for the improvement of towns. Wherever a measure is proposed for paving, or draining, or preparing a town by timely cleaning against the approach of cholera, their opposition may be pretty securely counted upon. It is believed to have been chiefly through the influence of this class that every effort to pass a Sanitary Act for Scotland has been defeated.

Should there be exceptions among them-men inclined to give what the workmen are asking for a wellconditioned house as much worth the rent to be paid as the houses of the gentry and middle-classes arethere are always great impediments to such an isolated undertaking. Good, clean, well-drained houses set up in an undrained foul district only make the wretched houses in their neighbourhood more wretched. We could point to two or three instances of "model houses for the working classes," where everything is as compact and tidy within as skill and zeal can make it. The internal impurities are removed by the most scientific hydraulic arrangements, making their exit triumphantly in tubular drains - but whither ? There are no streetsewers, and it is a worse case still than the pollution of a river. The sewage flows upon the open streets in the gutters past those other workmen's houses which are not model houses, and of course ren

ders them more pestilential than

ever.

Hence it is, we fear, in vain to look for a remedy in private enterprise, unless the way be opened by public measures. When these render the supply of well-aired and well-drained houses for the poor practicable, the time will come when the law may fairly require that no others shall be put to use. Far more stringent measures than this have been adopted without remorse in the floundering and incoherent progress of sanitary regulations. Thirty thousand inhabitants of Liverpool used to live in cellars. A few years ago this species of domicile was suddenly prohibited, and the thirty thousand were driven forth from their homes to find new dwellings. It was said that they did find them, to the advantage of themselves as well as other people, since the mortality of Liverpool, though still at the head of the mortality of England, was declared to have immediately declined. But the coercion which would provide sound dwellings when the way is cleared for them, need not be in this cruel shape. Example may be taken of other transactions in buying and selling, or letting and hiring. The person who buys or hires is entitled to a sound article. The tradesman who sells to him putrid meat or other food in a condition deleterious to health, is liable to punishment. The housejobber who lets out a poisonous house, should be amenable to similar restrictions. There is no interference here with proper freedom of transaction, any more than there is in the inspection of markets and the detection of unwholesome meat. The house-jobber is not bound to offer houses for hire, nor to have his houses of any particular shape, size, or value-he is to be bound only, like every other dealer, to give the article he deals in genuine-a house suited for its proper purpose a house to live, not to die in. Already the Legislature has fixed as much of this kind of responsibility as it practically could on the poorest and the weakest of the class who deal in house accommodation-the letters of lodgings

to tramps, beggars, and all the motley class who frequent what Police Reports and Acts of Parliament call

low lodging-houses." Driven to the worst localities, and generally poverty-stricken creatures, this humblest class of hotel-keepers must have extreme difficulty in doing anything practically to raise the necessarily low sanitary condition of their establishments. They have been required, however, by law to comply with certain regulations for cleansing their premises and furniture, and restricting the number of lodgers received by them to the means of ventilation in the premises; and it has been stated in the usual official manner, in numerous reports, that these regulations have within their narrow sphere improved the public health.

Of every one of the numerous documents which have lately been issued about the public health, the latest in date always proves more distinctly than its predecessors how efficacious the few measures of protection actually accomplished have been, and how much still remains to be accomplished. In the papers presented to Parliament by the Board of Health, just as it was merging into a department of the Privy Council, the instance of Tynemouth is cited among others. Between the two visitations of cholera in 1849 and in 1854, the place had been cleansed under the Public Health Act.

"The provisions of the Act relative to the registration and regulation of comhouses, and the construction of new mon lodging houses and slaughterstreets and houses, were immediately put in force. Care was taken to prevent the erection of houses without proper conveniences and provision for ventilation: no ashpits were allowed to be made against the main walls of dwelling houses, or without proper doors and covers: wherever sewers existed, drains from the houses were insisted on; and all persons laying out new streets were compelled to have back-entrances to struction of drains from the backs of the houses, and to provide for the conthe houses instead of carrying them underneath the basement story as was previously usual. In the autumn of 1852, when the appearace of cholera in this country was considered probable

should find ourselves in an awkward predicament: the other resource left us was to find an anchorage close to and under the lee of the extreme end of the Japan group, and remain there while the storm raged from the direction of the Pacific, and, directly it veered so as to blow from the Chinese Sea, to dash out and do our best.

The long projecting tongue of high land forming the south extreme of Kiu-siu was steadily approached. Within a mile of the rocks there were no ordinary soundings to be obtained-closer still we went, keeping a sharp look-out for sunken rocks, many of which would peep out of the smooth-heaving sea, rear their weed-crowned heads as if to warn us off, and then sink again with a gurgle and whirl of foam. Down through valley and glen rushed fierce squalls of winds (or "willywhaws," as sailors call them), which whisked the water into a sheet of foam, and made the tall ship reel like a cockle-boat. At last, close to the rocks, we obtained bottom in thirty fathom; but before the anchor could be let go it diminished to fifteen; we had then barely room to swing clear of the breakers. Thankful to have found a good anchorage within three-quarters of a mile of the cape, we lost no time in making preparation for the gale which was so likely to veer to the south-west, and then what was now a friendly shelter would be a deadly lee-shore. Towards evening the "Retribution' and yacht "Emperor" were to be seen to the westward, looking for an anchorage likewise. When they sighted us their course was altered, and they eventually anchored near. Throughout the night the weather continued to look still more ugly and threatening, and the quicksilver in the barometer was what we call "pumping," rising and falling with an irregular undecided action. In all the squadron the sharpest lookout was kept, and, with the steam up, we were ready to start at a moment's warning; for we well knew that, if surprised by a typhoon in our position, its resistless rush and power would throw us on the rocks in spite of engines and anchors.

The coast upon the western side of Cape Satanomi-saki or Tchichakoff, though bold, is not precipitous above the water-line; it consists of hills varying from one to two thousand feet in altitude, with rounded outlines, covered to their summits with verdure. In all the valleys, and upon the sheltered hill-sides, many trees were seen, mostly pines; and there was a considerable amount of terrace cultivation. In every cove there nestled a hamlet, and out of almost every copse of wood peeped the thatch of a Japanese cottage. Not a mile from our ship there was a village of some size, situated in a little bay, across the entrance of which the breakers now formed a barrier; and on its shingly beach we observed many boats hauled up, either on account of the weather, or for fear of the European ships that had so strangely visited their secluded haunts. The night came on dark and rainy, with no lack of wind; but through the storm we were amused to see numerous watch-fires lighted up along the coast, showing that the inhabitants were on the look-out. The effect of the flames against the wild sky heightened materially the strangeness of the scenery. The 7th August brought no decided change of wind, and one might have been tempted to push out and fight the gale, but our limited quantity of coal rendered it necessary to husband the store, in order that our return to Shanghai might be insured.

Some vague idea that coal was procurable in Japanese ports, because coal-veins abound in Japan, had prevented any depôt being formed at Nangasaki for the service of the Ambassador, and even at Shanghai it was only obstinate perseverance that enabled us to procure as much for the "Furious' she could carry.

as

In the afternoon a heavy groundswell, coming in from the south-east, indicated that the gale in the offing was veering, and soon after the vessels were canted across the wind by a strong current setting into the Pacific Ocean from the Sea of China. This current, running counter to the gale still blowing, occasioned a fright