MODERN STREET-PA VEMENTS. 83 



of the adjoining buildings. People with strong nerves, and accus- 

 tomed to this rattle from early youth, may to some extent become 

 hardened, but they will never get to be insensible to it ; any indispo- 

 sition is aggravated by the nuisance, and for recovery they hurry to 

 the country. People with weak nerves, especially delicately-organized 

 women, suifer great and permanent injury to the health. Nothing but 

 the constant torment has partially dulled us to this evil. If cities had 

 never been afflicted with this noise, and if, in a competition with other 

 more suitable materials, stone pavements were adopted, a storm of 

 opposition would soon sweep them out of existence again. Some 

 of these difficulties have been obviated by using smaller and harder 

 stones ; but the objection to the improved Belgian pavement in gen- 

 eral use, on account of the germs of disease stored in the wide joints 

 and under the blocks, still remains. 



To do away with the objection to stone pavements, effiarts were 

 made to introduce into cities the macadamized roads, which had proved 

 eminently successful as country roads ; these efforts have proved sig- 

 nal failures, though, when properly made, and in thoroughly good 

 order, macadamized roads approach perhaps more nearly the desiderata 

 than most others that have been tested, and are among the pleasant- 

 est and safest roadways in ordinary use. But the constant outlay for 

 repairs, the difficulty of traction over them when recently laid, and 

 considerations of hygiene and comfort, are such serious objections 

 that they are gradually being displaced by other kinds of pave- 

 ment. Whoever is doomed to live on a macadamized street needs 

 no description of its horrors. These streets have justly been nick- 

 named crushing-mills for granite. Six hundred and fifty thousand 

 tons of granite are annually pulverized on the streets of London, of 

 which but one-sixth is due to the wear of paving-stones, the rest is 

 attributable to the macadamized roads. This dust has to be scrubbed, 

 washed, and brushed ever so often from clothes, furniture, stairs, and 

 floors, before it is finally removed through silt-basins and carts, or 

 sewers and river. 



A little rain transforms these streets into broad slush-beds from 

 which every thing within reach is bespattered by the hurrying wheels 

 of vehicles. Ladies with modern garments cannot cross them, and who- 

 ever visits along such streets must leave a certain quantity of dirt on 

 floors and carpets. But mud is not the worst affliction, for this mash, 

 consisting of stone-dust, sand, and horse-dung, is transformed into dust 

 by dry and hot weather, is whirled up by the rolling wheels, or, still 

 worse, is drifted by wind, rendering the air unfit for respiration, pen- 

 etrating into the tender, sensitive cavities of the lungs, settling on 

 skin, hair, and clothes ; suffocating the flowers and green leaves of 

 plants along parked streets ; forbidding the opening of windows, foul- 

 ing the glass, and driving through the joints of the sash ; lodging in 

 curtains and blinds, spoiling the costly products of industry and man- 



