1866. | Sewage and Sewerage. 181 
This particular question may seem uninteresting or even repulsive, 
but the events of the last few years, and more especially of the very 
last, have given it a claim on the immediate and close attention of 
every man who has at heart his own well-being and that of his 
fellows. It seems also at present far removed from a speedy and 
definite settlement; but men of science and men of practice 
rarely work together without compassing their common object ; and 
the conspiracy of modern chemists and engineers with modern agri- 
culturists and sanitarians will assuredly form no exception to 
the rule. 
In this article we purpose, first, to delineate in the merest out- 
hne and from the practical as well as from the scientific point of view, 
the question, as it should be presented to a person, who, living in one 
of our many needlessly unhealthy towns, has his attention necessarily 
focussed by what he daily feels and sees and reads upon the subjects 
more or less systematically treated in the long list of works hereto 
prefixed. And in the second place, we shall point out the special 
merits and particular claims of each of those works, hoping thereby 
to place our readers fairly on a level with the present somewhat 
extensive literature of this department of hygienics. 
We take it of course for granted that all who read these lines 
are convinced of the immediate bearmg which the purification of 
our houses, streets, and streams has upon both the moral and the 
economical interests of the nation. Market Drayton, indeed, a town 
belonging exactly to neither of the two counties of Shropshire and 
Staffordshire, but an equal discredit to both, did last autumn get up 
a riot in the interests of filth, and rejected the Local Self-government 
Act, emulating therein, and not unsuccessfully, the conduct of those 
men of the “most brute and beastly shire” of Henry VIII’s realm, 
who sang of old in defiance of a similar movement for their own 
improvement,— ; 
“Let us be men, 
And we'll enjoy our Holland fen.’’ 
There is, however, no reason to think that many other towns 
can be found to follow the example; Market Drayton is, so far as 
we know, a unique instance of such a condition of things in the 
nineteenth century ; and its exhibition of folly and brutishness is 
probably to be referred to some temporary excellence in the organi- 
zation of the class which has a direct interest of its own in keeping 
the low lodging and public-houses, as well as other centres of moral 
and physical debasement, undisturbed and uninspected. Pure air, 
indeed, and pure water reduce greatly the need and the desire for 
stimulants, and the temptation thence accruing to the poor man to 
betake himself to the gin-palace, so that the gentry we allude to 
were, in a scientific poimt of view, wiser in their generation than 
probably they were aware of. The words, “Thou shalt eat but not 
