40 



THIRD STAGE OF STREET ARRANGEMENTS. 



To remedy its evils, in the construction of new streets, and the recon- 

 struction of old, the original passage for people on foot was restored, 

 but it was now split through the middle and set back with the house 

 fronts on each side so as to admit of the introduction of a special road- 

 way for horses and wheels, at a lower level. A curb was placed to 

 guard the foot way from the wheels ; gutters were used to collect the 

 liquid and floating filth, and sewers were constructed which enabled the 

 streams thus formed to be taken out of the streets before they became 

 so large as to flood the sidewalks. At the same time an effort was made 

 to so straighten and connect some of the streets that goods could be 

 taken from one quarter of the town to another by direct courses, and 

 without the necessity of doubling the horse-power at certain points in 

 order to overcome the natural elevations of the ground. 



Thus, just one hundred years after Wren's suggestions were rejected 

 by the merchants, their grandsons began to make lame efforts to secure 

 some small measure of the convenience which his plan had offered 

 them. 



A few of the latter invprovements had been adopted in other towns 

 at a somewhat earlier period than in London. In the plans of St. 

 Petersburg and of Philadelphia, for instance, directness and unusual 

 amplitude of road-way had been studied, and some of the free cities of 

 Germany had, at an earlier date, possessed moderately broad and well- 

 paved streets, but the exceptions do not affect the conclusion which we 

 desire to enforce. 



To fully understand the reason of this long neglect to make any wise 

 preparation for the enlargement of population which it would seem 

 must surely have been anticipated, we need to consider that while a 

 rapid advance was all the time occurring from the state of things when 

 a town was intended to be governed with little direct regard for the 

 interests of any but a very few of its occupants, at the same time direct 

 responsibility for the care of its interests was being diffused and held 

 for shorter intervals, and was, consequently, less and less felt, as a 

 motive to ingenuity and energy, by any one of the several individuals 

 who partook in it. The theory and form of town government changed 

 more slowly than the character and modes of life of those who were 

 called upon to administer it, but an adherence to the antiquated forms 

 was only calculated to make a personal duty, with reference to the 

 actual new conditions of the people, less easily realized and less effect- 

 ively operative. What is everybody's business is nobody's, and al- 

 though of late years experts, with professional training in special 



