would bring the blessing of air home to the
poor, as surely as the laying out of parks;
some, urging that houses should be built for
the poor in flats, or proving the value of
good model lodging-houses as investment—-
sick tenants being often unable to pay their
rents. One gentleman wishes that coroners'
inquests should be made of reasonable use to
science, and thinks it a scandal that in
framing tables of mortality he should be
baulked now-a-days by such a register as
"Found dead," or " Died by the visitation
of God." Nearly all specially denounce
the watering of milk, which is no harmless
adulteration, but, as one writer puts it, a far
worse crime than the poisoning of pickles.
Milk is almost the sole food of the infant, and
should be the main article of food for the child.
The milkman who waters his cans, is a starver
of children. In a town where the mortality
of children is so frightful as in London,
and where so great a number of the deaths
is caused by defective nutrition, that a large
part of what food the children do get should
be surreptitiously withdrawn, is not a trifling
matter. In one report it is urged upon
respectable householders that they should use
the very cheap and simple instrument which
tells tales on the milkman, and determinedly
—-not for their own sakes, but for the sake
of all the children dying round about us—-
refuse to buy milk that has been watered.
Again, we are told that the practice of giving
drink-money to dustmen leads such men to
refuse to empty the bins of the poor, except
when they can extort pence for the service,
and that in this way a considerable element
of unwholesomeness is added to their narrow
homes. The Paddington Vestry prints on
the cover of its report a special request that
the inhabitants will not give money to the
parish dustmen for the mere performance of
their duties. Upon drainage and water-
supply, the reports are of course rich in
information and suggestion. Dr. Barnes,
officer of health for Shoreditch, who happens
also to be senior physician to the Dreadnought,
knows, from his Dreadnought experience,
that the deposit on the banks, not the
filth held suspended in the river, is that by
which fever is bred; and he has made
observations of his own on Thames water, with
these results.—-He finds that the river never
is so filthy to the eye as during the flood and
high-water, precisely when it contains the
minimum of sewage matter. At low water,
on the contrary, when there is the maximum
of sewage, the water is often almost bright,
yielding comparatively little earthy sediment.
But, that admixture of earth and inorganic
matter from the banks, which makes the
Thames water turbid and opaque, serves
really for the conversion and the disinfection
of the sewage. It is the blessing of
the river: not, as most people suppose, its
curse. It exerts its disinfecting power best
on sewage matter entering the river, as it
now does, gradually, by various small outlets.
But if the whole drainage of London on
either side of the Thames be brought into
one great sewer, and discharged thence into
the river in a single torrent, Dr. Barnes
believes that it will form a stream too powerful
and rapid to unite soon with the river
water, or to be in any sensible degree
disinfected by the earths contained in them. It
would run into the Thames as the water of
the River Plata runs into the sea, holding its
own for miles, or as the red waters of the
river Maine, after entering the bed of the
Rhine, may be seen flowing side by side with
the green Rhine water, and distinctly
separate therefrom. If that be the case, the
outfall of the sewer flood cannot be situated
too far from the town.

ELEANOR CLARE'S JOURNAL FOR
TEN YEARS.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIRST.

BURNBANK COTTAGE, July the seventh,
Eighteen hundred and forty-four.—-Mrs. Lake
said to me this morning in her grave,
impressive fashion, " My dear love, it is a very
serious responsibility to be an heiress."

She was looking straight into me, as it,
were, and I felt that she was in such solemn
earnest that I dared not turn it off with a
laugh, as I could have done if anybody else
had made the remark. Indeed, for a moment,
a perfect spasm of terror made my heart
quiver again; I could scarcely get my
breath, and went red and white, hot and
cold, half-a-dozen times in as many minutes.

I cannot be glad as I know some girls
would. I never knew what it was to want
money, and so don't set much store by it—-
I don't see how it can make me any happier
than I have been, but I do see how it can
make me a very great deal more miserable.

Ever since Mrs. Lake said that about its
being a serious responsibility, I have felt as
if I had got a great heavy yoke about my
neck. I wonder what Uncle Robert meant
by laying such a burden upon me, when there
were Cousin Henry and Cousin Jane who
would have borne it with so much more
dignity—- who would have rejoiced in it,
sleeping and waking, which I shall never,
never do! He might have built a church
(and sorely they want one at Burnshead), or
endowed a hospital; he might have done a
thousand things with it more sensible and
profitable than bequeathing it to me whom
he had never seen, and who am not the least
bit grateful for it.

What am I to do with eighty thousand
pounds? If I were a man I would go into
business, and speculate with it, and get rid,
of it: I hate trouble and anxiety about
money, and I love to sit with dear
Grannie in this pretty old drawing-room,
and read, or sew, or idle, just as it pleases
me. I never felt to want anything grander