MODERN IDEAS OF SANITARY ECONOMY. 



49 



Bad as smoke is, it is fortunate that this happened, especially 

 at a friend's house, where they were emptying sewers. 



The chain of reasoning on every subject from the beginning 

 of time till now, has been so much broken, that it is not 

 surprising if we have not, on some, points, kept alive all the 

 knowledge that has been gained, or made additions with suffi- 

 cient constancy. Chemistry, such as it was, medicine, and 

 the knowledge of hieroglyphics, were alike lost together, and 

 similar events must always occur if the custody is in the hands 

 of a few. Nothing has more lamentably been lost than the 

 arts ; they have had no teachers, and had no historians. No 

 writers seem to have thought it worth while to tell us how 

 the carpenters, bricklayers, and potters did their work ; their 

 arts must have been devised with great wisdom, often after 

 much patient observation and ingenuity, but the lesson only 

 went to the next door. We could have spared many battles 

 to have known the duties of the keeper of the streets in 

 Rome, with his whole host of workmen, and how they worked. 

 Indeed, minute knowledge in any department is scarcely to 

 be got at the present day. Knowledge and habits are trans- 

 mitted, as of old, by chance words of masters, — a mere scolding 

 observation in the workshop at best. Now we know that a 

 great advance is not made by mere work, and chance thought; 

 the thought should be as regular as the action. What could 

 professional men do without their theoretical teaching, their 

 books, and their lectures, in which they learn to arrange their 

 knowledge systematically, and by doing this sow the seeds of 

 future advance ? Teaching of a similar kind is as necessary 

 for every art; every workman should have his lectures and 

 his books. 



Even now it is a fact that the men who work in our mills 

 are educated to one action only ; their fingers are taught the 

 movement, and they live by that one movement; they are 

 absolutely unfitted for any other after a time, and seldom 

 have a chance of learning another. It is found impossible 



H 



