its bulk being evidently more than the Commissioners or Parliament could find leisure to examine, the Secretary of the Board was directed to digest it in detail, and, comparing its various statements with such authentic facts as he might obtain from other sources, to frame a report exhibiting the principal results of the whole investigation. From his own various and extensive personal inspections, from the information which had been forwarded to the Commissioners, from the documents of the medical officers, and from his examination of witnesses, Mr. Chadwick, after nearly two years' labour, succeeded in completing the remarkable Report now before us.

Before, however, we enter upon the first important chapter, we cannot refrain from observing how little the subject to which it particularly relates-namely, the purification by science of the air we breathe-has hitherto been deemed worthy of consideration.

It is true that through our main thoroughfares, such as Oxford Street, Holborn, Piccadilly, the Strand, Pall Mall, and St. James's Street, the atmosphere is enabled to flow with healthful celerity; but to most of these ethereal rivers are there not linked on either side, in the forms of courts, alleys, stable-yards, and cuisde-sac, a set of vile, stagnant ponds in which the heaven-born element remains in durance vile,' until, saturated with the impurities and sickness of its gaol, it flows into, mixes with, and pollutes the main streams we have described? And yet if the pavement of St. James's Street be but cleanly swept, those who saunter up and down it, as well as those who in red coats or brown ones sit indolently gazing at carriages (many of which, as they roll by, seem mechanically to make their heads nod) appear not to be aware that they are one and all inhaling stale, pent-up, corrupt air, which an ounce of science could have dispersed by circulation. Even the hollow square of the royal palace is made to retain its block of the stagnant fluid, while several others of our public buildings, like the office at the bottom of Downing Street, and like the numerous high 'dead' walls inclosing property of the crown, &c., seem to have been purposely planned to act as tourniquets upon those veins and arteries which, if unobstructed, would give health and ruddiness to the population. Instead, however, of philosophizing any longer in the streets, we will invite our readers to enter with us for a moment into one of the splendid mansions of our metropolis; and, accordingly, ascending its spacious staircase, let us take up our position just in the doorway of the second of the suite of drawing-rooms, beyond which, the assemblage, being under high pressure, makes it evidently impossible for us to advance.

We here see before us, in a dense phalanx, figures of both

sexes, amongst whom stand conspicuous persons of the highest rank, beauty, and wealth in Europe. Upon their education no expense has been spared-money has done all in its power to add to nature's choicest gifts the polish of art. Their dresses are importations from every country of the civilized world. The refreshments are delicacies which it has required months, and in some cases even years, of unremitting attention to obtain. The splendid furniture has every comfort that ingenuity can devise. And yet within this painted sepulchre, what, we ask, is the analysis of the air we are breathing? That lofty duchess's head is sparkling with diamonds—that slight, lovely being leaning on her arm has the pearls of India wound around her brow-those statesmen and warriors are decorated with stars-the dense mass displays flowers, ribands, and ornaments of every colour in the rainbow; but among them all, is there, we ask, a single one who for a moment has thought of bringing with him the hogshead of air per hour necessary for his respiration? And if every guest present has neglected to do so, in what manner, it must be inquired, has the noble host provided for the demand? Alas! the massive, pictured walls around us, and richly-stuccoed and gilt ceiling over our heads, answer the question, and one has only to cast a glance at them to perceive that the 500 persons present are, like those in the Black-hole at Calcutta, conglomerated together in a hermetically-sealed box full of vitiated air.

Every minute 500 gallons of air pass into the lungs of those present, from whence, divested of its oxygen, it is exhaled in a morbid condition unfit for combustion or animal life-every respiration of each elegant guest, nay, even our own contemplative sigh, vitiates about sixteen cubic inches of the element; and yet, while every moment it is becoming more and more destructive to health-while the loveliest cheeks are gradually fading before us -while the constitutions of the young are evidently receiving an injury which not the wealth of Croesus will be able to repay -what arrangements, we repeat, has the noble host made for repairing the damage he is creating? If foul air, like manure, could be carted away, and if good air, like fresh, clean straw, could be brought in its stead, surely one of the simplest luxuries which wealth could offer to society would be to effect this sanitary operation; and thus, instead of offering a set of lovely women ices and unwholesome refreshments, to spend the money these would cost in pouring upon their heads, necks, and shoulders a continual supply of that pure, fresh, exhilarating, oxygenous mixture which gives animation to their hearts, and colour to their cheeks. But is this expensive, troublesome, complicated, horse-and-cart mode of purifying the horrid atmosphere we are breathing necessary?

No!

No! everybody present knows that outside the shutters and plateglass windows of the rooms in which we are suffering, there is at this moment in waiting, not two inches from us, an overwhelming supply (which might be warmed) of pure air, just as desirous to rush in as the foul air we have been breathing and re-breathing is eager to rush out.

The laws of specific gravity ordained by nature are in attendance to ensure for us the performance of this double processindeed so great is the supply of spare air in her laboratory, that the proportion of oxygen consumed by animated beings in a century is said not to exceed 76 of the whole atmosphere; and yet, as though the demon of suicide had prevailed upon us to thwart these beneficent arrangements, we close our doors, bar our windows, stuff up by curtains and drapery every crevice, as if it were the particular privilege of wealth to feed its guests on foul

air!

If any one of our readers who, like ourselves, may have grown out of patience at the long continuance of this barbarous custom, will take the trouble to put 500 beautiful little gold and silver' fishes into a bladder of the filthiest water he can obtain, and then attaching a weight, throw the whole into a clear, crystal stream. he may justly say-aye, and he may grin as he says it- Behold an epitome of a London drawing-room!' There is, to be sure, one difference:-the tiny creatures within the globule are as innocent of the foul suffering they endure as are those poor, lean, Neapolitan curs which almost every day throughout the year may be seen half choked by the rope that is dragging them reluctantly towards the Grotto del Cane, in order that one more inquisitive, good-humoured, ruddy-faced English family may see them forcibly suffocated in unwholesome gas.

In case, from the foregoing observations, it should become apparent that even among people of the highest rank, intelligence, and wealth, there has hitherto existed a lamentable neglect on a subject of such importance to them as the sanitary purification of the atmosphere in which they are living, it is reasonable to infer that if any one among us would make it his painful duty to penetrate into the courts, alleys, workshops, and residences of the lowest, of the most ignorant, and of the most destitute classes of our society, he would most surely detect a still greater disregard of scientific precautions, directly and flagrantly productive of misery and disease.

If, therefore, there was nothing at stake but the health, happiness, moral conduct, and condition of the labouring classes, the searching investigation unveiled in Mr. Chadwick's Report, coupled with the remedial measures submitted by him for con

sideration,

sideration, ought to win as well as claim our most serious attention; but when we reflect that the air the labouring classes breathe -the atmosphere which by nuisances they contaminate-is the fluid in which rich and poor are equally immersed-that it is a commonwealth in which all are born, live, and die equal-it is undeniable that a sanitary inquiry into the condition, for instance, of the ten thousand alleys, lanes, courts, &c., which London is said to contain, becomes a subject in which every member of the community is self-interested. Where nearly two millions of people are existing together in one town, it is frightful to consider what must be the result in disease, if every member should, even to a small amount, be neglectful of cleanly habits. It is frightful also to contemplate what injury we may receive not only from the living, but from the 50,000 corpses which are annually interred in our metropolis: indeed, no man who will visit our London churchyards can gaze for a moment at the black, cohesive soil, saturated with putrid animal matter, which is daily to be seen turned up for the faithless reception of new tenants, without feeling that the purification of our great cities, and a watchful search throughout the land we live in for every removable cause of disease, are services which science should be proud to perform, which a parental government should strenuously encourage, and which parliament should deem its bounden duty to enforce.

very

If foul air and pure air were of different colours, we should soon learn to repel the one and invite the other, in which case every house would be ventilated, and air-pipes, like gas-pipes and water-pipes, would flow around us in all directions. Although, however, we do not often see miasma, yet in travelling over the surface of the globe, how evident are its baneful effects, and how singularly identical are they with those patches of disease which are to be met with, more or less, in every district in this country! Let any one, after traversing the great oceans, contrast their healthful climate with the low, swampy parts of India, with the putrid woods of the Shangallah in Abyssinia, or with any part of the western coast of Africa. In all these regions miasma is either constantly or periodically generated by the corruption of vegetable matter; and the following description of the effects of this virus on the white population of Sierra Leone is more or less equally applicable to all :

'Those who are not absolutely ill are always ailing; in fact, all the white people seem to belong to a population of invalids. The sallowness of their complexion, the listlessness of their looks, the attenuation of their limbs, the instability of gait, and the feebleness of the whole frame, that are so observable in this climate, are but too evident signs, even where organic disease has not yet set in, that the disordered state

of

of the functions which goes under the name of impaired health exists, and in none is it more painfully evident than in the general appearance of the European women and children of this colony.'

In corroboration of this statement, we may mention as a single example, that, out of 150 men of the 2nd West India regiment who in 1824 were sent to Cape Coast Castle, all, excepting one, were either dead or sent home invalided in three months. At the expiration of this time, Sir John Phillimore, arriving off the coast in command of the Thetis, sent on shore two midshipmen and fourteen men, to mount a gun on a height. The party slept there only a night, yet, in one fortnight, every individual excepting a black man was dead!

In the opposite continent of America, even in healthy parts, wherever the land has been wilfully flooded for the purpose of canal navigation, the trees all die, and as the passenger-barge winds its way by moonlight through these pale, barkless corpses, a green coating of vegetable matter, about as thick as a blanket, and very appropriately called by the inhabitants 'fever and ague,' is seen writhing in folds before the prow.

Even in the most salubrious of the new settlements, where the air is dry, exhilarating, and the sky as blue as in Italy, the moment the virgin earth is turned up for the first time, the decomposition of vegetable matter brought to the surface invariably produces sickness; and thus a whole family of little English children, with their teeth chattering from ague, have too often been found mourning in the wilderness, on an oasis, the garden and the grave' of their father who made it.

In like manner, in this country, it has been shown by abundant evidence that on whatever patches of land, especially in towns, vegetable or animal matter is allowed to putrify, there disease, more or less virulent, is engendered: indeed it has been repeatedly observed that the family of a particular house has continued for years to be constantly afflicted with the very languor and fever described by every African traveller, which at last has been ascertained to have been caused by the introduction into the immediate neighbourhood of a couple of square feet of Sierra Leone, or, in plainer terms, by a grated untrapped gulley-drain, from which there has been constantly arising a putrid gas; and yet, instead of a few square feet, how many acres of Sierra Leone are, to our shame, existing at this moment in our metropolis in the shape of churchyards! There is one burial-ground, now or very lately in use in London, which contains, under one acre of surface, 60,000 corpses! There is in London a place where a crowd of young

* Vide Appendix to Report from the Select Committee on West Coast of Africa, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 5th August, 1842, p. 244. children