The iron conduit-pipe ends at Poland-street,
Oxford-street, and is 7 ½ miles long.

Our inspection was now terminated. We
took a parting glass of water with our
intelligent and communicative hosts, and returned
to town.

I firmly believe that the success of Lyttleton's
speech at the great meeting next day,
was very much owing to this visit. The
room was crowded in every part. His tone
was moderate. He avoided the extravagant
exaggerations of the more fiery order of water
spouters. Neither was he too tame; he was
not—as Moore said of a tory orator—like an

' awkward thing of wood
Which up and down its clumsy arm doth move;
And only spout, and spout, and spout away,
In ono weak, washy, everlasting flood,'

but he came out capitally in the hard,
argumentative style. His oration bristled with
logic and statistics to a degree of which I
cannot pretend to give the faintest notion.

Sipping inspiration out of a tumbler filled
with the flowing subject of discussion, Mr.
Lyttleton commenced by declaring his
conviction that the water supplied to the metropolis
was, generally speaking, bad in quality,
extravagantly dear, and, from excessive waste,
deficient in quantity. In order to remedy
those defects an efficient control was essential.
Continuous supply, filtration, and a uniform
scale of rates must be enforced. Some of
the companies were pocketing enormous
dividends, and was it a fair argument to retort,
that they are now being reimbursed for
periods of no dividend at all? Are we of
the present day to be muleted to cover losses
occasioned because the early career of some of
these companies was marked by the ignorance,
imprudence, and reckless extravagance, which
he (Mr. Lyttleton) could prove it was? If
our wine merchant, or coal merchant, or
baker, began business badly and with loss,
would he be tolerated, if, when he grew wiser
and more prosperous, he tried to exact large
prices to cover the consequences of his previous
mismanagement? Mr. Lyttleton apprehended
not. With this branch of the question—he
proceeded to remark—the important subjects
of distribution and supply were intimately
connected. It had been ascertained that a
vast proportion of the poor had no water in
their houses. Why? Partly because it was
too dear; but partly he (the learned speaker)
was bound to say from the parsimony of
landlords. He had pointed out a remedy
for the first evil; for the second he would
propose that every house owner should be
bound to introduce pipes into every house.
The law was stringent on him as to sewers and
party-walls, and why should not a water
supply be enforced on him also?—In dealing with
the whole question of supply—the honourable
gentleman went on to say, he could
not agree with those who stated that the
delivery of it was deficient. A moderate
calculation estimated the quantity running through
the underground net-work of London pipes
at 56,000,000 of gallons per day. Waste (of
which there is a prodigious amount), steam-
engines, cattle, public baths and other
supplies deducted, left more than 10 gallons per
diem per head for the whole population,—that
is supposing these gallons were equitably
distributed; but they are not,—the rich get an
excess, and the poor get none at all. He (the
learned barrister) was not prepared to say
that 10 or 20 gallons per head daily were
sufficient for all the purposes of life in this
or in any other city, great or small; but
this he would say, that under proper management
the existing supply might be made
ample for present wants;—whether for the
requirements of augmenting population and
increased cleanliness we need not discuss
now. What was wanted at this time was a
better distribution rather than a greater
supply; but what was wanted most of all was
united action and one governing body. Without
this, confusion, extravagance, and waste,
would inevitably continue.

Mr. Lyttleton wound up with a
peroration that elicited very general applause.
' Although we must,' he said, ' establish an
efficient control over the existing means
of water supply, we must neither wholly
despise nor neglect them, nor blindly rush,
into new and ruinous schemes. We must
remove the onus of payment from the poorer
tenants to their landlords, and into
whatever central directing power the Water-
works of this great city shall pass,' concluded
the learned orator, with energetic unction, ' our
motto must be ' " continuous supply, uniform
rates, and universal filtration! " '

ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.

THE LUCIFER MATCH.

SOME twenty years ago the process of
obtaining fire, in every house in England, with
few exceptions, was as rude, as laborious, and
as uncertain, as the effort of the Indian to
produce a flame by the friction of two dry
sticks.

The nightlamp and the rushlight were
for the comparatively luxurious. In the
bedrooms of the cottager, the artisan, and the
small tradesman, the infant at its mother's
side too often awoke, like Milton's nightingale,
'darkling,'—but that 'nocturnal note'
was something different from 'harmonious
numbers.' The mother was soon on her
feet; the friendly tinder-box was duly sought.
Click, click, click; not a spark tells upon the
sullen blackness. More rapidly does the flint
ply the sympathetic steel. The room is
bright with the radiant shower. But the
child, familiar enough with the operation, is
impatient at its tediousness, and shouts till
the mother is frantic. At length one lucky
spark does its office—the tinder is alight.