of every necessary and comfort of
life, means of procuring instant help in case
of accident or sickness, and all matters of
that kind, tend to prolong life, I do not see
why the townsman occupying this ground
plated with stone and brick should not have
sounder health than he could have easily
secured here as a rustic. We know, indeed,
that the mortality of London is comparatively
small. Though there are within its
boundaries large districts at present deprived
of drainage, and of other things essential
to town life, and though in these districts
men die by whole clusters, as grapes under
a blight, yet the gross mortality is small.
So great is the advantage given to those
townsmen who are able properly to draw the
profits of town life, that the preventible
sickness of many thousands fails to make
London appear a sickly town. When all is
done that has yet to be done, and that must
be done, I doubt whether there will exist
in the world a healthier place of residence
for Englishmen than the metropolis of
England. By the time that is all done,
we shall have advanced also in the moral
and mental discipline of urban life to a
better state. The common taste for music
is extending, and is much improved; our
amusements do more honour to our civilisation
than they did in the old times;
all classes are becoming more sensible
of their mutual dependence on each
other; high aims or hopes are prevalent. I
believe, therefore, that by the time we have
put London in perfect order as a town most
lit to be occupied by living bodies, it will have
become also the best place for the health of
growing minds and souls. Then it will be
the true type of a well-ordered metropolis
which is the centre of man's civilisation: a
capital greater in its way, and infinitely
greater in a greater way, than Athens in
the days of Pericles: a city within whose
bounds

                              Whate'er we see,
Or feel, shall tend to quicken or refine.

A great deal has to be done before London
can take rank as such a town. But we know
generally what are the next things to be
done in the way of that material improvement
out of which the best part of many
social improvements is begotten.

In the first place it is clear enough that it
is not good for man to confine himself
exclusively to one aspect of nature, even
though it be the best. As it is good for the
countryman to come among houses, so it is
good for the townsman to go among trees.
The Londoner who can afford it, spends a
month or two of every year among green
fields, or by the open sea. Whoever can do
that, living wholesomely wherever he may
be, fairly fills the round of his existence as a
civilized dweller in the land, and will exist,
I believe, so far in the best condition of
which his body is susceptible. But inasmuch
as a vast number of Londoners, arid
they, too, men who are seldom able to live
wholesomely in town, cannot afford to make
mouth-long visits to the world beyond the
bricks, the necessity which body and mind
have for a full and due intercourse with that
other half of nature must be, with a view to
this great multitude of cases, otherwise provided
for. Scraps of country in the shape of
parks must be left in the midst of the great
town, and every facility and comfort possible
must be provided for the aid of those who
after six days of toil and close confinement
seek refreshment on the day of rest among
the hills and fields, and by the hedgerows and
the running streams, or on the river. God does
not forbid the bird to sing or the bud to burst
into blossom on a Sunday; and He does not
forbid poor toiling men— though Glasgow
may—to go out on that day and hear the
singing of the thrushes, or inhale the sweetness
of the honeysuckles.

This is no trifling item in the account
of matters duly to be considered by those
who would improve the well-being of
towns. Sundays make the seventh part
of every man's life, and nearly the whole
of every poor man's time for rest and
rational refreshment. He has to get out
of them the results of his richer neighbours'
mouth or two at Hastings or upon the
Moors; the social relief of his wealthier
neighbour's home felicity, his lounging calls,
quadrille and dinner parties.

Secondly, for the best interests of life in
London, it is necessary that much thought
and supervision should be exercised in connection
with all workers in bricks and mortar.
We want for every man not only a fair
allowance of country, but also a fit allowance
of town. Whoever will walk in the fields
extending between London and Hampstead
or Highgate Hill, may see how they are
peppered with small houses run up here and
there in perfect independence of each other.
Here a row of four, beginning nowhere and
ending in nothing, called a street; there two
isolated tenements called villas, between a
puddle and a dust-heap; elsewhere a tall
tavern, all by itself, planned as a corner
house, next door to nothing but a gipsy shed
kept by an importer of hardbake. Reeking
stacks of bricks abound; and in one or two
places, but only in one or two, a snatch of
road has been planned, to which houses are
desired to come, but from which every house
at present keeps its own respectful distance.
But as this bit of town is now rising, Somers
Town rose; and the consequence is that
Somers Town is one of the filthiest spots on
the skirts of the metropolis. Without the
use of any unwelcome despotism, might not
some little influence from a presiding mind
be forced into such building operations?
Without spoiling, but in fact with the effect
of improving, every man's investment, might