n it was in the Squire's
time. I fear in eggs we have not improved. The old Squire complains
that they are imported from Scotland and France. We have, alas! for our
fresh eggs to go a good deal further now. Milk, he tells us, was carried
through the streets in open pails, exposed to foul rinsings discharged
from doors and windows, and contaminated in many other ways too horrible
to mention. No wonder the old Squire longed to get back to his old
mansion in Wales, where, at any rate, he could enjoy pure water, fresh
eggs and real milk. It is hard to conceive how the abominations he
describes could have been tolerated an hour. There was no Holborn
Viaduct--nothing but a descent into a valley--always fatal to horses, and
for many reasons trying to pedestrians. One of the sights of London
which I sorely missed was the Surrey Gardens, with its fireworks and
half-starved and very limited zoological collection. It has long been
built over, but many is the happy summer evening I have spent there
witnessing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, or some other representation
equally striking and realistic. In the City Road there were tea-gardens,
and at Highbury Barn was a dancing establishment, more famous than those
of the Eagle or White Conduit Fields, and all at times made the scene of
political demonstrations and party triumphs. In this way also were much
celebrated the London Tavern and Freemasons' Hall. There was no
attention paid to sanitation, and Lord Palmerston had not horrified all
Scotland by telling the clergy who waited on him that it was not days of
humiliation that the nation wanted, but a more intimate acquaintance with
the virtues of soap and water. The clergy as a rule looked upon an
outbreak of disease, not as an illustration of the evils of want and
water and defective drainage, but as a sign of the Divine disgust for and
against a nation that had admitted Dissenters in Parliament, and
emancipated the Roman Catholics. Perhaps the greatest abomination of all
was the fearful custom which existed of burying the dead in the midst of
the living. The custom died hard--churches and chapels made a lot of
money in this way, careless of the fact that the sickly odours of the
vault and the graveyard filled up the building where, on Sunday, men and
women and children came to worship and pray. Yet London got more country
air than it does now. The Thames was not a sewer, and it was all open
fields from Camden Town