Artizan rooms 200 cubic feet. 
Metropolitan Lodging
Houses 240 "
Poor Law Board Dormitories 300 "
Barrack Regulation 60 "
The best Hospitals 1,500 to 2,000
                               cubic feet.]

Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by rebreathing its own breath.  Shut up a man in a confined space, and he will die in the same way.  The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole of Calcutta because they wanted pure air.  Thus about half the children born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old, principally because they want pure air.  Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship.  His comrades brought him out of his hold to die in the open air.  Instead of dying, he revived, and eventually got well.  He was cured by the pure air.

The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is fever.  The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the fever tax.  It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die.  Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support.  Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns.  Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from preventible disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than five millions sterling annually.  But this is only the physical and pecuniary loss.  The moral loss is infinitely greater.

Where are now the “happy humble swains” and the “gentle shepherds” of the old English poets?  At the present time, they are nowhere to be found.  The modern Strephon and Phyllis are a very humble pair, living in a clay-floored cottage, and maintaining a family on from twelve to fifteen shillings a week.  And so far from Strephon spending his time in sitting by a purling stream playing “roundelays” upon a pipe,—­poor fellow! he can scarcely afford to smoke one, his hours of labour are so long, and his wages are so small.  As for Daphnis, he is a lout, and can neither read nor write; nor is his Chloe any better.

Phineas Fletcher thus sang of “The Shepherd’s Home:”—­

“Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd’s life and state! 
  When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns!

His cottage low, and safely humble gate. 
Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns: 
No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep: 
Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep: 
Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep.

His certain life, that never can deceive him,
Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: 
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him
With coolest shades, till noontide’s rage is spent: 
His life is neither tost in boist’rous seas
Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease;
Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.’