Supply of Water to the Metropolis. 251 



sations against the Company are frequently blended with such 

 irrelevant and silly remarks, as to throw no inconsiderable sus- 

 picion upon their general veracity and correctness ; as for in^ 

 stance in the following paragraph : — 



With praiseworthy zeal, and laudable exactitude, they follow 

 the instructions of Mrs. Rundell *, and other eminent professors, 

 for the making of puddings, pies, broths, soups, jellies and caudle $ 

 and the boiling of meats, poultry, fish, and vegetables. They cal- 

 culate, to a grain, the proportion that one ingredient ought to 

 bear to another ingredient : they know, to the fourth part of a 

 minute, how long each article should remain in the saucepan : 

 but — mirabile didu ! — to the quality of the water of which those 

 puddings are made, and in which those meats are boiled, the fair 

 house- keepers of Westminster are less attentive — as I shall pre- 

 sently show — than the inhabitants of rude and uncultivated coun- 

 tries. In the integrity of their hearts, it never enters into their 

 imagination, that any set of men should be so mercenary, so des- 

 perately wicked, as to sell to their customers a gift of Heaven, in 

 a polluted and unwholesome state. They will now see, that their 

 confidence has been abused, and that their indifference is culpable. 

 — pp. 9, 10. 



** Part I." of The Dolphin embraces three very important sub- 

 jects of inquiry, under the general title of " the importance of 

 pure and wholesome water for all domestic purposes." It first 

 calls our attention to the " importance of this inquiry to the 

 inhabitants of a thickly-populated metropolis :" and here we 

 are told, upon the authorities of Mr. Abernethy, Dr. Paris, anci 

 other writers on health and diet, that most people are better 

 for an occasional dose of country air ; that exercise is essential 

 to health ; that pure water is an agreeable and wholesome 

 beverage ; that people continually confined within doors by 

 sedentary business, are usually pale and sallow and dyspeptic ; 

 and that narrow alleys and dirty cellars are very comfortless 

 and insalubrious. 



As we are not indebted to the Grand Junction Company for 

 the supply of foul air as well as of foul water, we cannot see 

 the fairness of mixing up these two inquiries ; however, the 

 advantages of pure water are elaborately set forth a few pages 



* Some idea of the demand for this lady's writings may be formed 

 from the fact, that, first and last, one hundred and twenty ihousafid 

 copies of her ♦• New System of Domestic Cookery," have been printed; 

 and of its companion, ♦' The Family Receipt-Book," about fifty thousand. 



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