598 Hints for the Improvement 



in some way or other to amuse them, no smoking or drinking 

 being allowed. It is obvious that this would add greatly to 

 the comfort of that part of the labouring population who had 

 no regular home, even if they did nothing but sit and sleep 

 there ; and the expense to the town would not be great. The 

 moral character of the population would, in time, be very con- 

 siderably improved. The rooms might be taken in some of the 

 back streets, where houses are cheap. We have no doubt there 

 are many young men in Southampton that would volunteer to 

 deliver lectures, or to recite amusing or instructive passages 

 from books, or otherwise to entertain the occupants of such 

 rooms for an hour or two in the long winter evenings. The 

 rooms ought to be closed at 9 o'clock at the very latest, for 

 every labouring man ought to be in his bed at that hour. 



Naming the Streets and numbering the Houses. — Great im- 

 provements have been made within the last few years in the 

 raised letters used in naming streets, particularly in Paris and 

 Edinburgh. The best mode, we believe, is that described by 

 the late Sir John Robison, under the signature " Civis." (See 

 p. 88.) The numbers of the houses ought, as in Paris and many 

 of the new streets in London, to have the odd numbers on one 

 side, and the even ones on the other : and the numbers ought 

 always to commence at the same extremity of the street, at the 

 end nearest say the south for streets in the direction of north 

 and south, and at the east end of streets running east and west. 

 By examining the map of Paris, many excellent hints will be 

 obtained for street arrangements. 



Regulating the Charges made hy Cabs, Flies, &c. — The impo- 

 sitions of the cabmen, coachmen, and flymen, plying at the 

 termini of the railroads, is notorious to every railroad traveller ; 

 and, indeed, the drivers of hackney vehicles, wherever they may 

 be stationed, or by whom employed, seldom fail attempting to 

 overreach their employers. The remedy for this, in the interior 

 of towns, appears to us to consist in appointing a great number 

 of places, where every quarrel with regard to charge may be 

 adjusted; and, in regard to railroads, we think an ofiicer ought 

 to be appointed by the directors to determine all fares of cabs, 

 flies, or coaches, and that the determination of this officer should 

 be considered to be final by all those who ply for fares at the 

 termini. This officer should be stationed as a sort of outpost, in 

 such a situation as that all the carriages going in and out should 

 pass before him ; and the driver of each hackney vehicle as it 

 passed in, of which the fare was not agreed on between the driver 

 and the hirer, should apply to the officer, showing the luggage, 

 &c., and stating whence he came, or whither he was going, so 

 that the charge' might be settled at once. Some arrangement 

 of this kind appears to us absolutely necessary ; and we think 



