THE WONDERS OF THE SHORE. 165 



for ever and a day ; and sanatory reformers would no 

 longer have to confess, tliat they know of no means 

 of stopping the smells which sometimes drive 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 lengtli of the Caribs, who 

 uphold Cannibalism because, they say, it makes war 



