BELGIUM AND HOLLAND. 31 



placed upon* the natural strength of land without manure. 

 And this is in the main the correct theory. The vegetable 

 mould of the primeval forest is soon consumed. Nay, the 

 richest farms by far, — those which support the greatest num- 

 bers to the square mile, — the Belgian plains and the hollow 

 lands of Holland, brought no dower from Nature. They 

 were plains of moving sand reclaimed from the ocean, and 

 the soil or foundation was held down by a spread of sea- 

 weed ; then patches of clover were coaxed in, then a sward, 

 then a garden, — four hundred and seventy people to the 

 square mile, and a cow to every two acres. It is a rule with 

 them that every individual, brute or human, every resident 

 of barn or house, should answer to the fertilization of one- 

 half of an acre of ground yearly ; and it is a rule that 

 health, economy, nay, decency, demands. In the common 

 practices of drainage or sewerage we hardly know which to 

 condemn first, — its waste, its filthhiess, or its poisoning. If 

 Heaven were to give us a special revelation, and we should 

 presume reverently to anticipate its character by judging 

 from human needs and human suffering, it would settle no 

 vexed questions of faith, start no new dogmas, open no new 

 doors to the spirit-world for those who are imitating young 

 John Chivery, who, as Dickens tells us, caught cold in one 

 eye by peeping through the keyhole. No, it would rather 

 unfold to mankind that wonderful miracle of mercy and 

 beauty by which all that the uses of human life and nature 

 have rejected should be kept from befouling water, and pois- 

 oning air, not only with typhoid and cholera and diphtheria, 

 but that these same germs and exhalations of death should 

 inbreathe themselves, and pass by the wonderful processes of 

 Nature, into the richness and sweetness of fruit and food; 

 for it is only the very dregs of the sewer's festering foulness 

 that can give that exquisite tint to the veining of the cab- 

 bage and beet leaf that shames the set of the Tyrian purple 

 in Caesar's robe. It is only when the suckers of plant-life 

 have digested the scum of the cesspool, and the flowers' 

 lungs have draw^ in the mephitic exhalations, that we may 

 say with the Song of Solomon, " Awake, O north wind ; and 

 come, thou south ; and blow upon my garden until the spices 

 thereof may flow out." 



I hope I am not expected to set forth many specific meth- 



