London to John O Groat's. 227 



journals publish almost daily distressing accounts of 

 the miserable tenements occupied by the men and 

 women whose labor makes England the garden of 

 fertility and beauty that it is. Editors are making 

 the subject the theme of able and stirring articles, 

 and some of the most eloquent members of Parliament 

 are speaking of it with great power. It is not only 

 generous but just to take the language in which the 

 writers and orators of a country denounce the evils 

 existing in it cum grano sails, or with considerable 

 allowance for exaggeration. Their statements and 

 denunciations should not be used against their country 

 as a reproach by the people of another, because they 

 prove an earnest desire and effort to reform abuses 

 which grew up in an unenlightened past. As a speci- 

 men of the language which is sometimes held on this 

 subject, I subjoin the following paragraph from the 

 Saturday Review, perhaps the most cynical or unsenti- 

 mental journal in England : 



" There is a wailing for the dirt and vice and misery 

 which must prevail in houses where seven or eight 

 persons, of both sexes and all ages, are penned up 

 together for the night in the one rickety, foul, vermin- 

 hunted bed-room. The picture of agricultural life 

 unrolls itself before us as it is painted by those who 

 know it best. We see the dull, clouded mind, the 

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