208 THE SALMON. 



health and beauty around, to become an eye-sore and a 

 nose-sore extending over half the breadth of the Island ? 

 Shall the turrets of Abbotsford be reflected from a mon- 

 ster gutter, all stains and stench ? Shall fair Melrose, 

 instead of being " viewed aright by the pale moonhght," 

 be nosed in the dark ? Forbid it, all the powers of Par-^ 

 liament ! If indeed that prohibition could not be uttered 

 without destroying or impeding the brisk and cheerful 

 industry which has sprung up among those sweet hiUs, 

 there might be nothing for it but to sigh and submit. 

 But it would be almost profane to doubt that from so 

 great an evil there must be means of escape — that Hawick 

 may prosper and yet Tweed be preserved. The manu- 

 facturers in great towns have already been made to con- 

 sume their smoke, and the time seems coming when 

 compulsion to the same eflfect will be applied even to 

 London householders — when even " the sacred domestic 

 hearth" shall be invaded by the officers of Sanitaryism. 

 The Londoners have agreed to impose upon themselves a 

 vast expense, in order to cease making a sewer of their 

 own Thames ; and can it be doubted that if the people 

 of the towns on the Tweed and other such rivers shall 

 faU to find the will, there will be comparatively little 

 difficulty in the Legislature finding the loay to prevent 

 their doing what they unhappily like with a river which 

 is not their own, but is the property of five counties, and 

 the pride of Two Kingdoms ? 



Nor, as already said, is the case one in which the 

 towns are always the offenders, and the rural districts 

 the suffierers ; sometimes the position of the parties is 

 reversed, and country gives town as bad as it gets. 



