316 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
January 20. 
thrive under such stimulants, and great, hearty men, in 
the prime of life, take no great harm in a smoky atmo¬ 
sphere, yet it makes sad work with children and 
delicate people, and with delicate plants. 
Another great sanitary law is, that inside a house or 
room each individual requires at least 500 cubic feet of 
space, or nineteen cubic yards, or a cube of eight feet 
each way, in height, length, and breadth, to respire in, 
due regard being had to ventilation. This is known 
and acted on in such institutions as model prisons and 
lunatic asylums, but at balls, routs, concerts, lectures, 
schools, theatres, public meetings, public houses, and 
other places of public recreation, falsely so called, no 
regard at all is paid to this simple requirement. Gas¬ 
burning greatly adds to the contamination of the air. 
(During the last visit of cholera, the Edinburgh College 
of Physicians even cautioned people against crowding 
to their favourite evening chapels.) A needless sacrifice 
of life takes place every year among the young, from 
crowded school-rooms, and insufficient play ground and 
waut of holiday-making. We have noted very many 
cases of sudden death clearly traceable to the excite¬ 
ment of political meetings—a sort of intoxication far 
more besotting than that of the accompanying beer 
barrel. The ancients had a name for this social disease, 
which, with them, assumed the form of epilepsy. 
How few of these evils affect those who live in the 
country. Children there have room enough to play in ; 
and seed time, bay time, and harvest (according to the 
reports on education), are always made holiday of. And 
then (right or wrong) country people leave a great deal 
to their superiors in political matters, and they live the 
longer for it. Half-a-century ago, a north-country 
farmer was asked what he really thought about the state 
of affairs. “ I think, indeed ! ” he replied ; “ don’t you 
know that Lord George Cavendish thinks for Eurness 
Eells, and Charles Fox thinks for Lord George Caven¬ 
dish ! ” On the contrary, the Americans (according to 
Lord Carlisle) are all politicians, and always unhappy 
and unhealthy. The chief danger of crowds to our 
country people arises from their staying too long for 
their own good, or that of their cattle, at great markets 
and fairs. It is a safe rule to “ Give a market price, 
and take a market price, and get home by dinner time.” 
A very numerous class of sufferers, however, calls 
loudly for the abolition of the smoke nuisance, and the 
extended occupation of suburban gardens, with an encour¬ 
agement of the allotment system, and removal of need¬ 
less restrictions on the sale of land in and about towns.-- 
* Cato says—The countryman has tlie fewer bad thoughts; his property 
binds him to the state not so much as a pledge, but by stronger and 
better ties of feeling; and it is natural that a labour wholesomely ex¬ 
ercising the bodily powers, not performed in gloomy dwellings, but in 
the unrestricted light of nature, in sunshine and storm, should preserve 
the mind sound, cherishing a sobriety and keenness of observation, a 
quiet, unbiassed judgment. The freeholder who cultivates his own field 
enjoys, in the progress of the seasons, and the nature of his employ¬ 
ment, an unvarying, a liberal relaxation, without which it is impossible 
that mind and body can be maintained. The city operative scarcely 
recruits his strength on the holiday; he allows himself no respite from 
toil; dependent on those to whom he looks for favour, he feels, or is the 
! object of the jealousy of trade in which one party is ever clashing with 
another; he wants the calm self-confidence inspired by permanent 
property. The ideas of the peasant are lively and pleasing, because 
their number is confined; those of the townsman arc confused by 
I obscure conception and misapplied language. In the country the national 
race is kept up; towns are made up of all nations and lands. [Niebuhr.] 
New public parks and pleasure grounds for the living | 
are more generally needed than even cemeteries for the 
dead and hospitals for the sick and dying. In planning | 
suburban residences for working men (where land is 
comparatively cheap), either open squares should be 
laid out with garden-plots to the front of the bouses, or 
enclosed, hollow squares, for greater seclusion, with the 
gardens behind, after the Eastern fashion. All our 
good things in the shape of free commerce, education, 
and free institutions will soon be lost to us, unless we 
give our fellow-countrymen free air, and, above all 
things, habits of personal cleanliness and purity.* 
The signal fall of many great cities has been traced to 
both moral and physical causes of corruption. All crowded 
places near the level of the sea are especially prone to 
all the known forms of epidemic disease, from which, 
however, an elevation of 100 or 120 feet gives a com¬ 
parative immunity, and 350 or 400 feet a very great 
immunity indeed (as Mr. Farr tells us); 350 feet 
happens to be precisely the height of ancient Jeru¬ 
salem; though Tyre, Sidon, and all the once proud, and 
wise, and rich cities of Phoenicia were by the sea shore- 
Damascus, one of the oldest cities in the world, still 
numbers 150,000 or 200,000 inhabitants. It stands at 
an elevation of 2,200 feet. But it is with its beautiful 
suburban gardens than we have at present to do. Ac¬ 
cording to Col. Chesney [Tigris and Euptlirates , v. ii]— 
“ The city is embosomed in flower and fruit-gardens, 
dotted here and there with kiosks shaded with trees; 
the whole forming a wooded belt of thirty miles (some 
say fifty miles), at least, iti circumference, terminated at 
one side by an almost boundless wilderness.” 
A part of the river which waters all these gardens, is 
here lost in pools and marshes, and, accordingly, no 
wonder that when the wind sets in from tins quarter 
“intermittent fevers prevail in autumn; yet, on the 
whole, Damascus must be accounted a healthy city, and 
in it aged people are very numerous Now, we have the 
authority of Mr. Simon, for stating, that in the city of 
London few people reach to three score years and ten 
J. J. 
RENOVATION OF OLD GARDENS. 
I have heard it said oftener than once, that the reason 
why “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin" was read simultaneously, as 
it were, all over Europe, was because 'The Times spoke 
out so strongly against it on its first appearance. I 
have myself acknowledged, over and over again, that 
Mr. Cobdcn gave a great impulse to the circulation of 
The Cottage Gardener when he proposed his scheme ■ 
for buying freehold allotments, as I shall call them. 
Those who aspired to be primo councillors, if not prime i 
ministers, advised their trade associates, all over the 
country, to do as Mr. Cobden wanted them to do, and 
i 
* The cleanness of the body is a symbol of the purity of the soul; 
external purification is called sanctification, because it makes those 
observe at least an outward purity who draw near to the sanctuary. 
Cleanliness is a natural consequence of virtue ; since filthiness, for the 
most part, proceeds only from sloth and meanness of spirit (and we 
generally find cleanliness practised in proportion to the prevalence of 
a spirit of genuine piety). It is certain, the nastiness in which most of our 
lower sort of people live, especially the poorest, and those that are in 
towns , either' causes or increases many distempers. [Ftcury.—Ancient 
Israelites .]—J. J. 
