it is a crime against God. No man who cherishes an enlightened gratitude to the Giver of all good can fail to be impressed with the sinfulness of tossing aside, as utterly valueless, gifts which He designs for purposes most beneficial. The supreme respect which is due to God, as well as the regard which is due to the welfare of man, alike call for penitence for the past, and amendment for the future.

It is common, among a certain class of writers, to represent physical law as all-in-all in the matter of health, and to represent any direct recognition of God in it as mere superstition and folly. Cholera, for example, it is often said, is no dispensation of Divine Providence; it is a dispensation of human filth and negligence and disorder. Observe the laws of nature, and such a visitation will never come. This way of putting the case is all the more dangerous that it contains a half-truth. It is true that in former times, men disregarded the laws of nature, and suffered for this, and that the duty of respecting these laws is one of the great lessons which the advanced science of the present day is teaching us. But it is not less true, that in the visitations of epidemic disease, there is an exercise of God's sovereignty. The time when such scourges are sent the selection of many of the places to which they come-the manner in which individuals are brought into con

tact with them-the physical laws which regulate such points as these are often so much out of sight, and so completely beyond our control, that practically the diseases appear to come to us simply at the bidding of God's sovereign will. In these respects, at all events, we are bound to honour that will, and entreat God of his mercy to spare us. Our Lord, in repelling the temptation to cast himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, taught us that to set at defiance the great laws of nature is just to tempt the Lord our God. To set at defiance the natural laws of health, and pray God to make us strong, is to do that very thing which He deprecated so earnestly. To observe the laws of health, as far as our circumstances and regard to even higher duties permit, and at the same time avow our dependence for life and health on the will and pleasure of our Maker, and humbly implore Him to guard us and ours from the arrow that flieth by day, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness, and from the destruction that wasteth at noon-day, is to combine the two great means of preserving health, and that in the very spirit of our Lord and Master.

CHAPTER VII

HOUSES versus HOVELS.

"For us the streets, broad built and populous,
For them unhealthy corners, garrets dim,
And cellars where the water-rat may swim!
For us green paths, refreshed by frequent rain,
For them dark alleys, where the dust lies grim!'

Child of the Islands.

THE problem of houses for the working classes is at once the simplest and the most difficult of social questions. To demonstrate that there ought to be better houses for them, is the easiest of all processes; to show in what manner they are to be provided in sufficient number, in sufficient size, and at practicable rents, is the most difficult. After considerable experience, we are much inclined to set down this last as an insoluble problem. If there is to be any paying of rent in the matter, we do not see a possibility of providing houses numerous enough and large enough for the whole workmen of the country. To make the problem soluble, the element of rent must be eliminated entirely. Term-day must cease to have any terrors for the working man. The dreaded visit of the landlord demanding his money

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must become a thing of the past. The old Hebrew Arcadia must be brought back, when every man sat under his vine and under his fig-tree, none making him afraid.

Probably some will think that this mode of solving the problem resembles the old recipe for catching a bird by putting salt upon its tail. How are we to get houses for which no rent shall be paid? Do we propose a general seizure of house property, or a general massacre of house-agents? Or do we recommend to working men a moonlight flitting at every term, and leaving the landlord in the lurch? Our recommendation lies in a very different direction. The working man must get quit of the landlord by becoming the landlord himself. He must do, all over the country, what has been done so well at Birmingham and other places, invest his own savings in his own house. Let him do this, either with money accumulated in his earlier years, according to the plan which we have been urging so strongly, or by means of the assistance which investment societies are willing to give him. In the latter case, a few years will elapse before he can sit rent-free. But when he does enjoy the property clear, he will find it a very great advantage. The interest which he would have received for the purchase-money had it been otherwise invested, would have amounted to

much less than the rent which he would have paid had his house belonged to another. And besides, had he not had the inducement to save money, arising from the hope of becoming proprietor of his dwelling, it is more than likely that neither capital nor interest would have existed at all.

When public attention began to be directed, some fifteen or twenty years ago, to the miserable condition of the dwellings of the people, the first and most natural impression was, that the upper classes being possessed of ample capital, should, partly as a matter of charity, and partly as a matter of business, provide the necessary dwelling-houses for the working classes. Several schemes have been started on this footing, which have proved successful enough in one way, but unsuccessful in another. They have shown what sort of erections houses for the working classes ought to be, and they have given to the working classes themselves a sample of the higher comfort which such houses afford; but they have been unsuccessful in overtaking in full the existing destitution, and unsuccessful also in inducing other capitalists to provide, at practicable rents, houses adapted to the class in view.. Of late years, accordingly, it has been deeply impressed on the friends of this movement, that if ever it is to be carried to a successful conclusion, the working