ows not six feet away from them; or like the upper floor of the
corner-house on the opposite shore directly above the bridge, where the
ground floor, utterly uninhabitable, stands deprived of all fittings for
doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when this open
ground floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of
other facilities!

If we leave the Irk and penetrate once more on the opposite side from
Long Millgate into the midst of the working-men's dwellings, we shall
come into a somewhat newer quarter, which stretches from St. Michael's
Church to Withy Grove and Shude Hill. Here there is somewhat better
order. In place of the chaos of buildings, we find at least long
straight lanes and alleys or courts, built according to a plan and
usually square. But if, in the former case, every house was built
according to caprice, here each lane and court is so built, without
reference to the situation of the adjoining ones. The lanes run now in
this direction, now in that, while every two minutes the wanderer gets
into a blind alley, or, on turning a corner, finds himself back where he
started from; certainly no one who has not lived a considerable time in
this labyrinth can find his way through it.

If I may use the word at all in speaking of this district, the
ventilation of these streets and courts is, in consequence of this
confusion, quite as imperfect as in the Irk region; and if this quarter
may, nevertheless, be said to have some advantage over that of the Irk,
the houses being newer and the streets occasionally having gutters,
nearly every house has, on the other hand, a cellar dwelling, which is
rarely found in the Irk district, by reason of the greater age and more
careless construction of the houses. As for the rest, the filth, debris,
and offal heaps, and the pools in the streets are common to both
quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another feature most
injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the multitude of pigs
walking about in all the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept
imprisoned in small pens. Here, as in most of the working-men's quarters
of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in
them. In almost every court one or even several such pens may be found,
into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal,
whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all four
sides, is utt