ether. The gaping chinks admitted every blast; the leaning chimneys
had lost half their original height; the rotten rafters were evidently
misplaced; while in many instances the thatch, yawning in some parts
to admit the wind and wet, and in all utterly unfit for its original
purpose of giving protection from the weather, looked more like the top
of a dunghill than a cottage. Before the doors of these dwellings, and
often surrounding them, ran open drains full of animal and vegetable
refuse, decomposing into disease, or sometimes in their imperfect course
filling foul pits or spreading into stagnant pools, while a concentrated
solution of every species of dissolving filth was allowed to soak
through and thoroughly impregnate the walls and ground adjoining.

These wretched tenements seldom consisted of more than two rooms, in
one of which the whole family, however numerous, were obliged to
sleep, without distinction of age, or sex, or suffering. With the water
streaming down the walls, the light distinguished through the roof, with
no hearth even in winter, the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of
childbirth, gives forth another victim to our thoughtless civilization;
surrounded by three generations whose inevitable presence is more
painful than her sufferings in that hour of travail; while the father of
her coming child, in another corner of the sordid chamber, lies stricken
by that typhus which his contaminating dwelling has breathed into his
veins, and for whose next prey is perhaps destined, his new-born child.
These swarming walls had neither windows nor doors sufficient to keep
out the weather, or admit the sun or supply the means of ventilation;
the humid and putrid roof of thatch exhaling malaria like all other
decaying vegetable matter. The dwelling rooms were neither boarded
nor paved; and whether it were that some were situate in low and damp
places, occasionally flooded by the river, and usually much below the
level of the road; or that the springs, as was often the case, would
burst through the mud floor; the ground was at no time better than so
much clay, while sometimes you might see little channels cut from
the centre under the doorways to carry off the water, the door itself
removed from its hinges: a resting place for infancy in its deluged
home. These hovels were in many instances not provided with the
commonest conveniences of the rudest police; contiguous to every
door might be observed the dung-hea