is really, nine-tenths of it, only a great nest of separate
villages huddled together, will be divided into three great
self-governing cities, London, Westminster, and Southwark; each with its
own corporation, like that of the venerable and well-governed City of
London; each managing its own water-supply, gas-supply, and sewage, and
other matters besides; and managing them, like Dublin, Glasgow,
Manchester, Liverpool, and other great northern towns, far more cheaply
and far better than any companies can do it for them.

But where shall we get water enough for all these millions of people?
There are no mountains near London. But we might give them the water off
our moors.

No, no, my boy.

"He that will not when he may,
When he will, he shall have nay."

Some fifteen years ago the Londoners might have had water from us; and I
was one of those who did my best to get it for them: but the water
companies did not choose to take it; and now this part of England is
growing so populous and so valuable that it wants all its little rainfall
for itself. So there is another leaf torn out of the Sibylline books for
the poor old water companies. You do not understand: you will some day.
But you may comfort yourself about London. For it happens to be, I
think, the luckiest city in the world; and if it had not been, we should
have had pestilence on pestilence in it, as terrible as the great plague
of Charles II.'s time. The old Britons, without knowing in the least
what they were doing, settled old London city in the very centre of the
most wonderful natural reservoir in this island, or perhaps in all
Europe; which reaches from Kent into Wiltshire, and round again into
Suffolk; and that is, the dear old chalk downs.

Why, they are always dry.

Yes. But the turf on them never burns up, and the streams which flow
through them never run dry, and seldom or never flood either. Do you not
know, from Winchester, that that is true? Then where is all the rain and
snow gone, which falls on them year by year, but into the chalk itself,
and into the greensands, too, below the chalk? There it is, soaked up as
by a sponge, in quantity incalculable; enough, some think, to supply
London, let it grow as huge as it may. I wish I too were sure of that.
But the Commission has shown itself so wise and fair, and brave
likewise--too brave, I am sorry to say, for some who might have supported
them--that it is not for me to gainsay their