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policy of that Power , and ia her relations with the Week . No military elements were included , in Count Buol ' s statements ; . and , w « repeat , the case of Austria has never yet been laid * before us , whatever opinions , or suspicions , we . »« ay be dis , posed to form of her inveterate political tendencies , her financial necessities , or her projects of aggrandisement .
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PBOFESSOR FABADAY AND THE THAMES-( From a Correspondent . ') One strange peculiarity of the Great Briton notable among many others is , that , after manifesting the most profound indifference with regard to matters intimately affecting his own interest and well-being , suddenly-, when some great and celebrated hero takes notice thereof , he will fl y off into a passion of bustle and surprise , so demonstrative as to induce the suspicion that he has hitherto "been utterly ignorant of the matter in hand . This too with regard even to matters perfectlv well known and popular .
Take the case of the river Thames , for instance . No man who has ever lived upon , or passed along the banks , crossed the bridges , been conveyed along the stream , or drunk the water of that river , but has known at any time these ten years past that it is little better than a drain , filled with corruption and the seeds of the most terrible disorders . This has been quite familiar knowledge to every Londoner , and has been canvassed both in House of Commons and private talk ( not to speak of much writing in the newspaper's ) these many years past . Committees of the Common
Council of the City , Conservators of the river and Boards of Health , assisted by all the science and experience of civil engineers , surveyors , and chemists , Jhave been busying themselves about the matter , but without result . Proposals have been made to conduct the sewage into drains running parallel -with the Thames , and so into a reservoir among the Essex marshes at a convenient distance from London , where it might be disinfected and sold for valuable manure ; but this has been laid aside , after ascertaining that the cost was too enormous even for this wealthy country , and the conversion of the sewage into a marketable article
impossible . And thus it is that the river Thames , amid a conflict of reports and surveys , measuring gentlemen with their tapes , and analysing gentlemen with their apparatus , has been suffered ^ to seethe and stink on , diffusing miasma and mephitic vapour around . Suddenly it happens that Professor Faraday , a savant of world-wide reputation , takes a voyage in one of the Citizen steamboats from London to Hungerford Bridge ; the learned man sees , smells , and judges for himself , writes a letter to the Times , and lo ! the whole press and population is in a ferment , as if the question had never been agitated before .
Now Professor Faraday , with all respect be it said , is not a chemist , but a natural philosopher : it is his speciality to deal with and investigate electric and . magnetic phenomena . I doubt if ever he made an analysis in the whole course his life . This is not urged in disparagement of him ; for it is no more than to say of an eminent equity draftsman that he never conducted an Old Bailey case . In his province , Professor Faraday is one of the greatest , perhaps the greatest , man in the world ; out of it , he is no better than any one else . I shall , therefore , take leave to investigate the Professor ' s story as if it were that of a mere ordinary man .
The Professor states , in substance , that he was struck with the condition of the river , its smell , the thickness of the water , and its opacity . To test the latter he adopted the ingenious expedient of dropping wet cards into the stream , and watching them sink . - So opaque was the water that he lost sight of his cards before they had sunk an inch . With regard to the cause of this stench , density , and opacity , the Professor states that the paddles of the steamers rolled up " clouds of feculence ; " but ho details no experiment whereby he established the fact that feces formed tho basis
of the pollution . Unable to boar the stench of the river any longer , tho Professor left the steamer at Hungerford Pier , and found the atmosphere of the streets , except near the gulley-holes , very much purer than that upon the river . Such was , in effect , the log of PrpfesBor Faraday's voyage up Ifae Thames , and the matter upon which he indited hi * letter to the Times . 2 fTow , I flatter myself that if I had enjoyed tho
honour of accompanying the Professor upon the river , I could have pointed out to him one or two facts which appear to have escaped his penetrating eye . Had his gaze wandered to the banks , instead of attempting to sound the impenetrable depths of the river , he would have noticed a strange phenomenon . He would have seen at the mouth of every one of the sewers , supposed to be pouring concentrated poison into the stream ,- a that humtueput
group of individuals following , not dishonourable profession called mtidlarkmg , which consists in rummaging the turbid waves of the sewers for such waifs and strays as may be found there . This would have aroused the Professor ' s curiosity , for here were human beings existing in immediate contact with the poison in a concentrated form , which the Professor found too strong for himself , though in a state of high dilution . When , after landing , he smelt the sewage it not
gases escaping at the gully-holes , did strike him that the greater part oFthose volatile erases , sulphuretted hydrogen and ammonia , had escaped long before the sewage found its way into the river ? . . But if the Professor , with the true spirit of that Bacon who died the martyr of an experiment , had prolonged his voyage to Vauxhall , a singular anomaly would have been manifest to him . After passing " Westminster Bridge , he would have observed , that although the air was still more obnoxious from the exhalations of the bone-boilers
and fell-mongers of Lambeth , the water ( with the exception of a stream running in a line from the Vauxhall Gas-works ) was remarkably pure . This , though the banks were as populous as before , covered with even a more sewage-producing population—the purlieus of Westminster on the right , and Lambeth Marsh on the left . Here he might have seen his cards a long way down .
The Professor , therefore , evidently hits upon a portion of the truth , and that not the most important . If sewage icere the most potent infectant of the Thames , why should the stream between Milbank and Lambeth be purer than that opposite the Temple ? In answering this question , I will take the liberty of offering a few facts to the notice of the Professor , which may , perhaps , convince him that when he made use of the word
" feculence" he jumped at a conclusion in a rather unphilosophical manner . The truth is that the gas-works on the banks of the Thames supply the largest and most powerful portion of the deleterious matter which infects its stream . Between Westminster and London Bridges are three very large gas-works , all of which , in direct cojitravention of the law , turn their refuse matter into the Thames . How many thousands of gallons this may amount to it would not be easy to determine ; but it is quite certain that it consists of saturated solutions of
sulphuretted hydrogen and ammonia , the very gases which render sewer exhalations dangerous . Why is not this prevented ? The conservators of the Thames really have , or pretend to have a difficulty in discovering the pipes which pour the poison into the bed of the stream . Certain it is that those pipes are considerably below low watermark , and as they have become imbedded in the mud at the bottom , the guises must saturate tho mud and then the river , instead of escaping into the open air as at the mouths of the sewers . Some months ago the conservators did discover the
waste-pipes of the City Gas Company , in Whitefriars , and obtained a judgment against them ; but this judgment has never been enforced , upon the plea that to stop the pipes before other means of disposing of the waste wero provided would have the effect of putting hal f the City into darkness , and so the nuisance is permitted to remain . Tho Professor may naturally ask how it is that the gas companies prefer to pour into tho river , to the detriment of the whole population , liquids which , properly treated , might produce articles of commerce r To this we nave no satisfactory answer : the fact , however , is that they do so .
The sewage of London finds its way into the river in such a high state of dilution that at the end of the great sewers little or no stench is perceptible . The Fleet Ditch , or example ( by far the largest sewer open to the Thames ) , gives pussago to such an amount of fresh drainage water from the high grounds of Ilampstonu , iJUghgato , and Islington , that tho sewage forms a very insignificant proportion of its contents . A man may walk up this drain from tho riverside to Islington without suffering , any extraordinary iuoonvenionco .
The advocates of tho scheme for constructing large- drains parallel with the Thames , have not calculated tho dimensions of the work needed . To contain tho streams which pass out of the sewers ( sewage and drainage ) , a tunnel twenty yards wide would bo scarcely sufficient . The construction of such a tunnel would occupy an indefinite number of years , and would , during the period of its construction ,, entirely stop the wharfage trade of the metropolis . To construct such a ° tunnel between London and the Essex marshes , the sum of one hundred millions sterling would probably be insufficient .
It should , in conclusion , be noticed that the state of the Thames at the time of Professor Faraday ' s voyage was quite abnormal . A long drought will render any river more than ordinarily impure . Since that , we have had rain , and the Profossor might see his cards for at least six inches down , at tow water and opposite the Temple-stairs . But the conservators of the Thames should be pricked on to execute justice upon the gas
com-X _ _ .. * . » . 1 . . . /• i i _ * . [ The gas-works arc part , not the whole of tho cause . For the Fleet stunk as well aa the Thames , urtd in both the stink has now subsided . Foul cesspools , sewors of deposit , and drains of deposit , accumulating : the filth of months , to bo suddenly washed , down en masse to the river , are the graud evils . Separate interception of sewage proper is the only permanent aud complete euro . Rapid substitution of tubular drainage for cesspools and mansizc sewers of deposit will progressively diminish these sudden eruptions of filth . —Ed . Leader . ]
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WHAT THEY ARE SATING IN PARIS . " Except the Exposition , the subject thai seems to excite the least interest in Puns at tinpresent moment is the publication of the letters oi Marshal St . Arnaud . The reasons are , partly , the known character of the man—repulsive aud shallow , without any depth that even curiosity would care to explore , mentally and morally the development of an ordinary criminal—and partly the certitude that any genuine revelation would be intercepted by both private and public censors . Who cares , indeed , about any concocted account of an enthusiastic visit to the Morea , or
wandering in the steps of Byron , when every one knows that the occasion of the young officer's absence from court was that in a moment of gambling distress and anxiety he cut the golden tassels from behind Charles Dix ' s throne and pawned them to a Jew ? The whole career of this man , who was destined to drag the bravest sons of England to unnecessary slaughter , was full of traits of this kind ; and if they arc not oftener alluded to in conversation , ' tis because people have ceased to busy themselves much about the morality of any members of the Imperial court , living or dead . Thqy are known and judged ; and , generally speaking , the mention of their names is equivalent to a reproach .
" This common consent in dislike and contempt , however , produces a somewhat curious result . English travellers and tourists , who strugg le , into Parisian society armed with a stammering knowledge of French , hearing the names of St . Arnuud , and IMorny , and Fould , and Persigny mentioned casually without any saving clause—just as u nogligent Oriental might spenic of Shcitan without a curse , or of the Prophet without a blessing—very naturally in their absence of information take to looking upon these gentlemen in quite n serious
point of view—aa if their positions eorrosponueu with those of Raglan , Pulinerston , or Clarendon . This mistake leads them sometimes into amusing collision with French wit— -which , however , they rarely understand , drinkiug the sparkling and acid draught offered them , slowly , after it has subsided into the flat insipidity of a menUl translation . Half the errors into which innocent travellers fall arise from receiving as statement what is meant mcrply for " chuff . " "As to the letters of St . Arnaud , howovor , tho
questions put concerning them are considered too bad , and provoke a kind of indignution . ' * h » fc sensation have they produced in Franco ! Mon Dieu 1 Monsieur X . ( speaking across the rmmj * and thus attracting the eyes of " all thy world ) , hero is a gentleman wants to know what Mentation the letters of St . Arnaud have produced P '— ' What letters r Every one affected at first not to know tho things wero published ; they had just st ^ n soino specimens in a preliminary puff ' of the Afoniteur , but then tho mono enndia admitted bumfi awuro of th « - fact that nil officials of a curtain runic had l > ccn requested to mibacuibc for a , copy , aa a
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© 98 BHB LEADE R . [ No- 278 , Saturday ,
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 21, 1855, page 698, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2100/page/14/
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