d by the mind or
the eye; though it is the business of wisdom and philosophy to correct
such illusions of our intellectual or sensitive powers.

Of the moral condition, and feelings, concentrated within a spot thus
embraced by a glance of the eye, how impossible to form an estimate!
Supposing 900,000 human beings are thus huddled together, in 150,000
houses, we may conclude, that 100,000 will always be lying on the bed
of sickness, and that 30,000 are constantly afflicted by mortal
diseases, eighty of whom expire every day, or three in every hour! Of
the 150,000 house-keepers, above 50,000 are racked by poverty, or by
the dread of its approach; other 50,000 maintain a precarious
independence; while the remaining 50,000 enjoy comfort and happiness,
chequered, however, by care and the conflict of human passions. The
greater part of the first class are either already plunged, or
predisposed to plunge, into vices and crimes unknown except in such a
city; those of the second class maintain a virtuous struggle, but more
frequently sink into the lower, than rise into the higher class;
while, among the third class, there are found all degrees of virtue
and worth, although mixed with an envious spirit of rivalry, and an
indulgence in expense and luxury that greatly reduce the number of
truly happy families.

On the north, north-west, and east, I still beheld the signs of this
overgrown metropolis in villages, which branch, like luxuriant shoots,
on every side. And it was only on the south and south-west, in the
swelling downs and in the charms of Box-hill, Leith-hill, and Dorking,
that I could discover the unsophisticated beauties of nature, which
seemed to mock the toils of man, in the contrast they afforded to the
scene in the opposite direction. Yet men, who never receive
instruction except through their own experience, flock in tens of
thousands to share in the lottery presented to their ambition in great
cities, where thousands perish while in pursuit of the prize, where
other thousands obtain nothing but blanks and disappointments, and
whence the tens who achieve their object, gladly escape to enjoy their
wealth, free from the disturbance of city passions, amid the placid
and unchangeable beauties of nature.

In looking around me from the windows of Hartley's Fire-house, it was
impossible to avoid reflecting on the wretchedness of Want existing in
the sooty metropolis, and the waste of Means in the uncultivated
country