properly called by others a question of life and death. We do not mind Mr. Disraeli and his friends having a policy of sewage, but it is essential that the policy should be accurate and enlightened. The advocates of the contagion theory have no weakness for sewage, especially in an olfactory point of view. They say, also, that it places disease under the most favorable conditions for the consummation of its evil mission. But they assert, in opposition to former theories of the Board of Health—that has an unlimited command of print and pay—that sewage, in itself, does not breed fever and infection, unless it is charged with specific ingredients of contamination. Infectious diseases are only communicated by the virus of specific poison. Many of us, in the course of the holiday season of the year, accumulate a collection of instances on the subject. In the famous cities of the Continent, and in exquisite Swiss villages, we have the most noisome stinks and sights, yet we hear nothing of fever. In fact, it almost seems a rule that, where Heaven throws the greatest beauty and magnificence, man should exhibit the greatest abominations. Natural beauty goes, like King Cophetua's beggar-maid, in rags. Clovelly, in Devonshire, is the most romantic spot we know in the western land, and, till recently, it was the most undisguisedly dirty. But all through the west of England, and, indeed, we are afraid, all over the three kingdoms, we shall find lovely villages that, despite their loveliness, will give the utmost offence to sight and smell. Yet, for whole decades of years, no infectious illness is heard of in these villages; and then, suddenly, fever or small-pox breaks out, and, to say the least of it, simply decimates the humble inhabitants. The contagionists will assert that the evil state of things was comparatively harmless until charged with a specific virus. One fact bearing on the subject will be fresh in the recollection of all readers. Many years ago, the Thames began to stink horribly in the hot months. The law courts broke up, the Houses of Parliament were saturated with chloride of lime, the river steamers lost their traffic, and business-men went miles out of their way, in order to avoid crossing a city bridge. "India is in revolt, and the Thames stinks," were the two national humiliations bracketed by our severe friend "the intelligent foreigner." It so happened, also, that a Thames waterman died of the cholera; and that unfortunate waterman created the utmost consternation in the country. A frightful outbreak of cholera and fever was expected. But nothing of the kind happened. The health of the metropolis was remarkably good; the death-rate below the average, especially in the diseases supposed to result from poisonous emanations. There was certainly a failure in the supposed connection between epidemics and a bad sanitary state of things; and the suggestion arises that we were mercifully saved the introduction of some element that might have wrought all the misery we dreaded.
When the Prince of Wales was ill, we all of us, unhappily, ac-
