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species. We have handed over Thirlmere to the tender 
mercies of the Manchester Corporation, and, though there 
were abundance of ugly sites available, we have built 
Barrow-in-Furness where its fumes and its “ roughs ” may 
desecrate the vale of Dudden. Our cities, from London 
downwards, present, as their main feature, meanness, mono- 
tony, and ugliness by the square mile, rarely indeed relieved 
by a street or a single building upon which the eye may rest 
without pain. If we are ever reminded of man’s craving for 
the beautiful we exclaim that this is a “ work-a-day world,” 
a “ plain, practical age,” and the like. But in those very 
phrases we pass judgment upon ourselves. Men have always 
had to work for their support ; but till these very “ advanced ” 
days they found such work not incompatible with a love for 
the beautiful. Athens and Corinth of old were great com- 
mercial centres ; so in later days were Venice and Genoa ; 
Florence and Nuremberg were busy seats of successful 
manufacturers. But commerce and industry were not in 
those times considered to necessitate or to justify ugliness. 
Why should they now ? To own that we have not the time, 
the energy, or the means to overcome the vileness and 
squalor which surround us, is to confess our modern system 
a failure. 
Let us look at public health and vigour, — the subject most 
direCtiy touched upon by Dr. Beard and Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
Here, too, we find the sacrifices which the industrial organ- 
isation of society and our dominant covetousness have de- 
manded and received. It is all very true that the average 
duration of human life has increased, thanks to the greater 
care taken of infancy, to improved medication, and to cessa- 
tion (temporary ?) of those epidemics which decimated 
Europe in antiquity. But those diseases which speak of 
constitutional weakness, and from over-work under anxiety, 
instead of decreasing seem to augment. Softening of the 
brain, apoplexy, paralysis, heart-diseases, general debility, — 
in short, the whole class of “ competitive affections,” as 
they might be called, — are now fearfully prevalent. And to 
them our sanitary reformers say nothing ! They wage war 
against the fever which carries off a man swiftly, but they 
care little about those lingering maladies which enfeeble 
successive generations. We are told, on good authority, 
that among the poorer classes in England mental disease 
has during the last forty years been multiplying at the rate 
of 300 per cent, whilst the increase of population is 45 per 
cent. The late President of the British Psychological Asso- 
ciation warned us that if the growth of insanity continues 
