h it out, but no amount of
fetching out ever relieves him. That is a national delusion. Our
enlightened public is much troubled with such scorpions. Sanitary writers
are infested with them.

They also say, That in one-half of London people drink Thames water; and
in the other half, get water from the Chadwell spring and River Lea. That
the River Lea, for twenty miles, flows through a densely-peopled district.
and is, in its passage, drenched with refuse matter from the population on
its banks. That there is added to Thames water the waste of two hundred
and twenty cities, towns, and villages; and that between Richmond and
Waterloo-bridge more than two hundred sewers discharge into it their fetid
matter. That the washing to and fro of tide secures the arrival of a large
portion of filth from below Westminster, at Hammersmith; effects a perfect
mixture, which is still farther facilitated by the splashing of the
steamboats. Mr. Hassal has published engravings of the microscopic aspect
of water taken from companies which suck the river up at widely-separated
stages of its course through town--so tested, one drop differs little from
another in the degree of its impurity. They tell us that two companies--the
Lambeth and West Middlesex--supply Thames Mixture to subscribers as it
comes to them; but that others filter more or less. They say that
filtering can expurge nothing but mechanical impurities, while the
dissolved pollution which no filter can extract is that part which
communicates disease. We know this; well, and what then? There are
absurdities so lifted above ridicule, that Momus himself would spoil part
of the fun if he attempted to trangress beyond a naked statement of them.
What do the members of this Water Party want? I'll tell you what I verily
believe they are insane enough to look for.

They would, if possible, forsake Thames water, calling it dirty, saying it
is hard. So hard they say it is, that it requires three spoonfuls of tea
instead of two in every man's pot, two pounds of soap for one in every
man's kitchen. So they would fetch soft water from a Gathering Ground in
Surrey, adopting an example set in Lancashire; from rain-fall on the
heaths between Bagshot and Farnham, and from tributaries of the River Wey,
they would collect water in covered reservoirs, and bring it by A COVERED
AQUEDUCT to London. In London, they would totally abolish cisterns, and
all intermittence of supply. Water in London they woul