THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. LFF 
longer have to confess, that they know of no means 
of stopping the smells which in past hot summers 
drove the members out of the House, and the judges 
out of Westminster Hall. 
Nay, in the boat at the minute of which I have 
been speaking, silent and neglected, sat a fellow- 
passenger, who was a greater adept at removing 
nuisances than the whole Board of Health put 
together; and who had done his work, too, with a 
cheapness unparalleled ; for all his good deeds had 
not as yet cost the State one penny. True, he lived 
by his business; so do other inspectors of nuisances: 
but Nature, instead of paying Maia Squinado. 
Esquire, some five hundred pounds sterling per 
annum for his labour, had contrived, with a sublime 
simplicity of economy which Mr. Hume might have 
envied and admired afar off, to make him do his 
work gratis, by giving him the nuisances as his per- 
quisites, and teaching him how to eat them. Cer- 
tainly (without going the length of the Caribs, who 
upheld cannibalism because, they said, it made war 
cheap, and precluded entirely the need of a commis- 
x7 
aN 
