climb the hill to my tent, and make his salaam. His friends would not touch him, but arranged that he should make a pilgrimage to Budrinath, to get purified by the Brahmins there, after which

they would re-admit him into society. This was only a polite way of making him perform quarantine for 20 days, the time required for the journey.—Agra Messenger, March 9, 1852.

'IT is a common saying, that one half the world does not know how the other half lives; and no where is that so true as in this Metropolis. No where are there such impenetrable veils, such thick party walls between wealth and poverty, between comfort and wretchedness. Few are aware what is going on, perhaps, within stone's throw of their own drawing rooms. It is one world under another. Were we to be assured, indeed, on some indisputable testimony, that a few miles under this fair surface, and the cheerful light of day, there lay a region such as Virgil describes, overhung with Cimmerian gloom, beset with filth, and long ages of neglect, where innumerable poor creatures, born like us, lay reeking, festering, rotting, fermenting in the most hideous squalor, destitution, mutual hate, and despair, it certainly would do much to embitter our own existence; and there is hardly any thing we should not do on the mere speculation of affording some relief to those unfortunate beings. Strange to say-shocking to reflect-thereisactually such a world, actually such beings, so dwelling in such misery and degradation, and we shut our eyes to it. Yet the only differences that can be alleged are in favor of every exertion being made in behalf of this subterranean world. There are several important distinctions, indeed, between it and the Virgilian Hades. In the first place, the miseries, the cry, the smoke of the pit, the deleterious effluvia, the moral contamination, and other perils of bad neighbourhood, in our case all reach us; and that deadly scent and demoniac uproar, of which a poet just gives his hero a mere taste, as he skirts the great gulf, ever envelope us, night and day, in this huge metropolis. Then, it is in our power to do a great deal for the mitigation of these miseries and nuisances, and consequently, also, for our

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own greater comfort and safety. ther, many of us are continually descending into the above horrid limbo, and we know not how soon we, or our relations, or, at least, our acquaintances, may fall into the pit, and smoulder away the rest of our days, not very far hence perhaps, but still in the most dismal plight. The whole difference, then, between our metropolitan Inferno and that of the poets is, that we are vastly more mixed and allied, conjunct and bound with ours, than we could be with any which any dealer in preternatural horrors ever ventured to imagine.

These doleful and as some people will think-rather unseasonable reflections, are forced upon us by a most authentic and business-like report, just made to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, by Captain Hay, one of the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police, on the operations of the Common Lodging House Act, pursuant to an address of the House of Lords, dated the 10th ult. If anybody wants to sup full of horrors, and to chasten the festive mirth, apt to run into excesses at this season, he can look into that report, and see there how half the world lives, and that half not surrounded by a Styx, or walled into a Lazaretto, or crowded into a Jewry, but all around us, and about us, and among us, how near we none of us know, or if not very near, yet 'twixt the wind and our gentility. By the daylight which the Common Lodging House Act has at length thrown into these regions, we learn that about half the dwellings liable to the operation of the Act, have been examined and registered, and they amount already to three thousand three hundred, inhabited by about fifty thousand persons, or about fifteen to a house. That moderate proportion, however, is very much exceeded in a great number of these houses, invariably, indeed, in

the worst localities. The majority of the houses, it should be explained, are small-eight-roomed, may be-with hardly any space behind, and as destitute of accommodation as the combined poverty and covetousness of builder, owner, and tenant, can make them. We must assume, then, simply eight rooms, and nothing more; the floors rotted, the windows, happily, we should think, often broken, the doors gone altogether, the stairs decayed with wear and filth, the ceilings fallen, the drains long choked, if ever permeable, and everything that could render a house as little of a house, except in its closeness, as could be imagined. In these abodes the inspectors employed under the Act have frequently found 70 or 80 in one small eight-roomed house, 30 in a room 14 by 14, and so on; families, or rather human clusters, being content with a corner of a room, or less. Such houses are rented by tenants, then let to subtenants, by them to weekly or nightly occupants, in many gradations, each step deriving a profit from that below, till the total rent paid by the actual occupants of a filthy hovel in Church-lane will equal the rent of a spacious and handsome mansion in a respectable square. All sorts of dreadful scenes are brought to light by the visits of the police-sergeants employed in the work of inspection: people dying or dead of small-pox, or fever, or starvation, in small rooms, and in close contact with crowds of poor wretches, seemingly waiting their turn to be stretched on their bed, or bier, by their side. At night these poor creatures simply denude themselves of the rags they wore in the day, and, instead of walking in them, lie under them, as decently as may be. The stench that rises from these foul human lairs is so intolerable, as seriously to affect the health of the strong police sergeants engaged to inspect. Hitherto, for these evils there has been no remedy, but the new Act imposes some little check on the rapacity of the wretches who thus trade on human lives, with even less humanity than they would show in the nightly housing of cattle or pigs.

The work, however, is in no respect

easy. The inspecting sergeants have to walk more than eight hundred miles every week in discharge of their duty, and since the passing of the Act have paid near fifty thousand visits. They have to encounter deadly effluvia, contagious diseases, violent tempers, the shifty tricks of mercenary lodging-house keepers, and the shiftless habits of the poor. But they are often the means of doing the greatest good. Sometimes they report to the Board of Health, or to the local authorities, whole blocks of buildings destitute of proper drainage, and the continual nurseries of disease. Sometimes they separate fever cases just in time to save crowded neighbourhoods. Various instances are given in the Report, showing the great labor imposed by the Act, the many visits often required for the removal of one nuisance, or the correction of one offence, and the very great benefits that have frequently resulted. So valuable has the Act proved to be, so singularly efficient for its purpose, that it really is a matter of surprise it ever passed the Commons. It is even suspected that had the lodginghouse keepers had timely notice of the bill, they would have brought their interest to bear on the metropolitan members so powerfully as to procure its rejection-a result which other instances show to be too probable. As it is, the lodging-house keepers use their influence with the boards of guardians and other local authorities to avert the operation of the Act: in other words, to enable themselves to house more lodgers than it allows, to refuse the proper changes in their drainage or ventilation, and still to cherish dirt and disease. Nay, it has even occurred, and is still the case, that lodging-house keepers get themselves made guardians, that in that capacity they resist the operation of the Act, and vote parish money to the outdoor paupers lodging in their own houses. Besides that, a large part of the rent of such houses is virtually paid out of out-door relief; it is computed that many are a constant burden of £50 a-year each, to the parish for the sick, the dying, the widows, and orphans they send to it for support. The sensitive reader, whose taste revolts against

IT will be in the remembrance of many of our readers, that in the early part of the year 1851, the Lancet instituted, under the name of the Analytical Sanitary Commission,' an inquiry into the state in which various articles of food leave the hands of the retail dealers. The result of this inquiry was to establish the fact, that there exists a widely spread system of adulteration, and that almost every article that is capable of adulteration, is more or less extensively so adulterated. It was proved that, with a very few honorable exceptions, whole trades were guilty of the fraudulent practice of substituting cheap articles for those of a higher price, which they professed to sell. Tradesmen of recognised respectability, equally with those of little or no character, were implicated in this disgraceful exposure; and in spite of various attempts, failed to vindicate their reputation from the stain which it had thus contracted. The press was all but unanimous in the expression of its indignation, and the public lost much of that confidence which it had hitherto felt, that the name of a respectable firm was a guarantee for the genuineness of the article in which it dealt. But, notwithstanding the excitement which the discovery of this wholesale roguery created, notwithstanding the general alarm on the part of the public, the subject has been allowed gradually to drop-no efficient measures have been taken to prevent the continuance of the frauds detected, and the public, subsiding into its ordinary state of torpor, still submits to the universal imposition, justifying again, in this instance, the doggrel rhyme, 'Sure the pleasure is as great,

Of being cheated as to cheat.'

But the subject is not one which ought so easily to be passed over. The importance of diet to health is recognised by all physicians, is recognised by every intelligent member of the community; and in the

present day, when voluminous books are written upon the wholesomeness or hurtful nature of single articles (as the works of Dr. Howard upon salt-the numerous writings of teetotalers against alcoholic beverages-the volume by Dr. Lamb advocating the use, as a drink, of distilled in the place of common waterthe publications of the Vegetarian Society, which aim to prove the harmfulness of meat as an article of diet), in the present day, we repeat, when the proper food of man is so carefully studied, and, as far as lies in their power, so rigidly observed by great numbers of the community, it is a thing insufferable that dishonest or unreflecting tradesmen should dispense to their customers any and everything under high heaven, except just that particular article which these customers suppose they are purchasing. Putting out of question the morality involved in selling a cheap thing under the name of a dear one, and so pocketing an undue profit; and granting that these tradesmen, when they adulterate coffee with chicory, chicory with acorns, or bread with alum, believe (and what will not a man believe under the soft persuasion of a good speculation?) that chicory is as wholesome as coffee, and acorns as chicory, and alum as wheat flour, are we to allow such persons to erect themselves into a Board of Health, and dictate to the public what is and what is not wholesome; what they shall and what they shall not consume? And is it not manifest, that if we remit into the hands of these grocers, these bakers, and these milkmen, the care of accurately determining what is good for our constitutions, and of retailing according to their judgment, and not according to our wishes, any composite matter which may please them, is it not manifest that our bodies will grow lean in proportion as their purses grow fat, and that the British public will, in that case, richly merit the

appellation of the most gullible public in the universe? But, if nothing is in reality to be done-if the public obstinately refuse to defend itself—if these adulterators are never to be brought within reach of the law, nothing is left but to throw ourselves upon the mercy of our tradesmen, and, by calm reasoning, to endeavour to clear up to them the harm which we sustain from their manner of doing business; and thus persuade them, of their great goodness, to consent to a slight diminution of profit for the sake of the general well-being. We would address ourselves to the adulterating tradesmen in these terms: Gentlemen,' we would say, 'we are in the habit of frequenting your shops for the purpose of purchasing certain articles, which either the general consent of mankind, or the advice of our physicians, causes us to believe fitted for the nourishment or other benefit of our bodies. For example, Mr. Baker, it has been a prevalent opinion from the earliest dawn of civilisation to the present time, that bread, by which we understand fermented and baked wheat flour (not potato-meal and alum), is in a manner essential to the support of life, and actuated by this persuasion, we are desirous of procuring for ourselves and family a certain daily quantity of this article; and again, Mr. Grocer, it is generally thought in society, and we are backed by the opinion of the great chemist Liebig, that there is in coffee a something appropriate to the human constitution, a something which (whether it acts, as Liebig supposes, by reinforcing the bile, or not), gives strength and vigor. Partaking, justly or unjustly, in this sentiment, it is our wish to indulge ourselves and friends with a cup of coffee every morning at breakfast. But, Mr. Baker, it is not a current notion that alum is conducive to health; and, Mr. Grocer, there is a popular prejudice against acorns, baked horses' liver, and mahogany saw-dust: and when, having partaken of these substances, we fall into ill health, we are very apt to lay such illness at the doors of those who compelled us to swallow these unpleasant messes. the meanwhile, we are quite sure that it would not be agreeable to your feelings to be considered as hucksterers in the

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health of the community, nor be pointed at as the sellers of disease in canisters, and of death by the quartern. In the middle ages, when there came the great pestilence which converted many populous towns into mere cities of the dead, the people very generally took alarm, and cried out that they were poisoned. They accused the Jews of casting poison into the wells, and of bribing the bakers to introduce venom into the bread; and so convinced were they of the truth of this accusation, that they strung up Jews and bakers by the dozen. It was a great injustice this, for the bakers and Jews were innocent of the crime attributed to them. But in the present day, we are not so sure, Bakers and Grocers, that if the people were to get it into their heads that their bread is poisoned, and that their coffee is poisoned, and almost everything they eat is poisoned, and that a variety of their ailments arise from this cause, they would be altogether in the wrong. It is an unpleasant thing to say, but certainly if a man has a weak stomach, alum and mahogany dust will make it weaker; and the blame of this result must fall upon those who clandestinely mingle these substances with our daily food. Consider, friends, our health and our lives are in your power. If you distribute to us wholesome and nourishing food, we prosper and enjoy life; but if you hand to us unwholesome viands, we languish and sicken, a cloud comes over our existence, and we look forward to its termination. This is a grave responsibility, and if you abuse this responsibility by mingling, for the sake of a trifling increase of profit, various nasty extraneous ingredients with your wares, you cannot be surprised if the public should suspect that a little further profit would induce you to add other ingredients, positively injurious and life-shortening. One fraudulent step leads so easily to a second! And do not talk to us any more, we beseech you, of the wholesome nature of these adulterations. Alum, we earnestly assure you, does not in any way assist digestion. It only, by holding water, makes a loaf of bread weigh heavier than it ought to do: that is its sole virtue. In fine, dear bakers, if you will let us have our bread pure, and,