innoxiously, with slops, sewage, and refuse generally, as now amongst even the profit-making, as well as the scientific and respectable, vocations of an advanced society. But all this cosy, comfort-making system did not distract attention from adequate ventilation everywhere. The trust commission had made a point of stimulating to the utmost all novelty, ingenuity, and originality of adaptation; but none the less was a vigilant general supervision exercised, in view of the fact, that the great aim and end of the trust was sanitation.
There are still some interesting points, in looking back upon this great work—great, at least, for its day, even although we, from the grand modern platform, may think to look down upon it as amongst the smaller matters. A lofty and magnificent arcade arose in our city centre, within whose ample area all the chief branches of public and ordinary business, the public offices, the banks, the exchange, and the stock exchange, and the railways, could conveniently enter an appearance. When most of these were afterwards crowded out, they took refuge in more roomy quarters, as we shall see in our succeeding section, in treating of the feature of the concentration of the public offices. In these and other conveniences of progress, we were not, as I have already hinted, a day too soon in the vigorous rivalry of the international race. Our great rival, Paris, in particular, was ever upon our heels, and never closer than in the leaps and bounds into extension and wealth which followed upon her great ocean-canal construction, direct through the capital, from the Northern Channel to the Mediterranean. We were indeed later, but with quite equal
