robust, not corpulent, of middle height, but with
an air and carriage that made her appear tall;
peculiarly white firm hands, indicative of vigorous
health, not a vein visible on the surface.

There she sat knitting, knitting, and I by her
side, gazing now on herself, now on her work,
with a vague idea that the threads in the skein of
my own web of love or of life were passing quick
through those noiseless fingers. And, indeed,
in every web of romance, the fondest, one of the
Parcæ is sure to be some matter of fact She,
Social Destiny, as little akin to romance herself—
as was this worldly Queen of the Hill.

UNDERGROUND LONDON.
CHAPTER THE LAST.

THE paying power of the British tax-payer
seems to be enormous, and his patience under
financial milking is a lesson to noisy martyrs.
He stands like a cow to give forth, and only
exhibits the bull disposition when you tell him
what has become of the milk. He has a fretful
impatience of figures and statistical details,
and can always be driven mad by a long sum.
Artful members of the small governing family
have helped to nourish this disposition, by
making his figures as dry and repulsive as
possible. This is one way of choking an
efficient audit. Other artful members of the same
governing family have persuaded him that
details are only fit food for the parochial mind,
and that the parochial mind is a low,
vulgar form of popular intelligence. He has
listened to the voice of the charmer until he has
come to consider everything of importance
except what is under his nose or beneath his feet.

It is fortunate, perhaps, for the cause of good
sewer government that sewers are a part of the
parochial system that will not be neglected. The
naming of streets, the watering of roads, and the
feeding of paupers, may (it would seem) be done
by anybody, or nobody, or not done at all; but the
sewers, if not properly treated, have a power of
making themselves felt which they are not slow to
use. The great intercepting scheme of London
main drainage, which has been many years
before the metropolitan public, on paper, and some
years under them in bricks and iron, must have
originated from one neighbour grumbling at
another. The London valley on both sides of
the Thames, if it takes the trouble to look into
its unfortunate geological position, has a splendid
cause of quarrel with its neighbours, the upland
districts. The sewerage system of the last fifty
years has linked the whole metropolitan public
together by vast underground chains, and has
taught them that they are all suffering, enduring
brothers. In this joint-stock company some
few members have got the upper hand, and they
lean very heavily on those below them. The
central parts of London have to bear the gases
generated by sewage from numerous surrounding
neighbourhoods. A voice rises up in the
City, with reason and indignation in its tones,
and says, loudly, "Here's a pretty state of
things! In the days of cesspools, sir, every
household had to bear only so much annoyance
as it created for itself. But we have changed all
that. How many towns and villages now, sir,
send their filth through the City, which, under
the old cesspool system, had to keep it for their
own farms and gardens? Sixty-nine separate
populations, sir, numbering half a million of
persons, send their refuse past our doors, as
regularly as omnibuses run from Paddington to
the Bank. Day and night, sir, we breathe an
atmosphere tainted by these swollen underground
streams, and have not even the poor satisfaction
of sending some unbearable nuisance back. The
country, sir, had need give us a few zephyrs,
laden with odours of new hay and wild thyme,
as a set off against this bouquet of the thousand
sewers."

Representations such as these, accompanied
by the still small voice of parochial conscience,
the enterprise and invention of engineers, and
the ambition of legislative meddlers and social
reformers, naturally produced a variety of
sewerage schemes—before alluded to—which
ended in the great intercepting project at
present being carried out. The late Mr. Frank
Foster, aided by Mr. Haywood, began this plan
upon paper in 1849; Messrs. Bazalgette and
Haywood modified, extended, and continued it
—still upon paper—in 1854; the Metropolitan
Board of Works, when it commenced its career,
on the 1st of January, 1856, took it into
consideration; Mr. Bazalgette remodelled the plan
in 1856; a government commission—before
quoted—reported for and against Mr.
Bazalgette's scheme, and for and against many other
things, in 1857; Messrs. Bazalgette, Hawksley,
and Bidder—also before quoted—again reported
for and against the government report; and,
finally, Mr. Bazalgette, as engineer-in-chief to
the sewer parliament, began to carry out his
thrice-remodelled project in 1858.

Mr. Bazalgette's plan is to put something
like a few sewer-girdles round London, though
not exactly in the space of forty minutes. His
best labours, and those of his able lieutenants,
Messrs. Lovick, Grant, and Cooper, are doomed
to be hidden from the public eye, and to dwell
in perpetual darkness. Three vast tunnels on
the north side of the Thames, extending from
west to east, and two vast tunnels on the
south side, extending from west to east, with
several branches, will cut through the various
Thames-seeking main sewers, at different levels,
intercepting the daily millions of gallons of
sewage, and carrying them away to the river at
a point between Barking Creek and the
Plumstead Marshes. These new main tunnels, some
of which will help to drain the districts they pass
through, will be at least seventy-one miles long;
and will cost, with sewage-filtering reservoirs,
pumping stations, engines, &c., at least three
millions sterling. About five-and-twenty miles
of these tunnels are now completed, and the
contractors and their workmen are going on
rapidly with the lengths left to be constructed.
There are not wanting opponents to state that
the whole structure is a costly mistake, and that