had been recommended, lay on straw in a place which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging.  As to the comforts and luxuries to be found in the interior of the houses at Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health and amusement, we possess information more complete and minute than generally can be obtained on such subjects.  A writer assures us that in his younger days the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen.  The floors of the dining-room were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and small beer in order to hide the dirt.  Not a wainscot was painted.  Not a hearth or chimney piece was of marble.  A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were thought sufficient for any fireplace.  The best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rush-bottomed chairs.”

Of London Macaulay says:—­“The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into the country.  No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnum, extended from the great source of wealth and civilization almost to the boundaries of Middlesex, and far into the heart of Kent and Surrey.”  In short, there was nothing like the Avenue and the Fox Grove, Beckenham, in old times, and we who live there ought to be immensely grateful for our undeserved blessings.  “At present,” he says, “the bankers, the merchants, and the chief shopkeepers repair to the city on six mornings of every week for the transaction of business; but they reside in other quarters of the metropolis or suburban country seats, surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens.”  Again, “If the most fashionable parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and poisoned by their noisome atmosphere.  In Covent Garden a filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the great.  Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham.”

Well, you will say, all this proves what a vast improvement we have achieved.  Yes; but we must remember that Macaulay was writing on that side of the question.  Are we not more self-indulgent, more fond of our flowers, villas, carriages, etc., than we need be; less hard working and industrious; more desirous of getting the means of indulgence by some short and ready way—­by speculation, gambling, and shady, if not dishonest dealing—­than our fathers were?  I need not follow at further length Macaulay’s description of these earlier times—­of the black rivulets roaring down Ludgate Hill, filled with the animal and vegetable filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers, profusely thrown to right and left upon the foot-passengers upon the narrow