spend time and care and money on their houses; and the trade of building has become entirely demoralized because it is deprived of this instructed, zealous, personal control. True, there are Building Acts and sanitary regulations, but these things are actual evidence of public folly and neglect, and but a feeble substitute for public knowledge and opinion. These Acts themselves would be more efficacious on a freehold tenure. Were there only one proprietor or interest a monition could be served immediately, and it would be zealously attended to by men made sensible and wise by constant thoughtfulness about their well-appointed freehold homes.
Good has been attempted, and in part no doubt achieved, by philanthropic individuals and societies, who have built large blocks of dwellings for the artisans and poor; but this is only an improvement, sometimes a mere change of evil, not a cure. The buildings often are of many storeys high, to get the largest population possible upon an acre of the soil, a method which ignores or very much neglects the fact that light and air are needful for the due support of life, and that without sufficient space these cannot be obtained. The fashion has, however, been distinctly set, and now the working classes may look forward to a century of constantly increasing solar obscuration. For the future, light and air will be, still further banished from the streets as well as from the houses: even leaseholds have not brought us to this horrible condition. The small tenements in Bethnal Green have not a pleasant reputation, but compared with a continuous neighbourhood of 'sanitary' dwellings they are a suburban paradise. For instance, near the Hackney Road the streets are tolerably wide, the houses too are low, and there are 'gardens,' so that the inhabitants can see their copper-coloured sun, when he sometimes appears, and also get some little colour of their own. But in most model dwellings sun and moon will be but astronomical expressions; the horizon and the zenith will be understood as synonyms; and the young population will become mere pallid fungi, growing feebly at the
