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„ ¦ THE LBA. DB'l. [No. 278, Saturday, t...
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PBOEESSOB FABADAY AND THE THAMES'
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WHAT THEY" ARE SAYING IN PARIS.. . . " E...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Conduct Of The War. We Have Received...
policy of that Power , and in ^ rdttti tlSt Wfist No military elements were included in XS * B ? orSi ^ tSnts , W , we'epeaMhe c * x of Austria , has never yet . been laid before us , whateve ^ pinions , or suspicions , we may be diap ^ to ^ rTrf her in veternta poHtical tenden SVs ! her financial necessities , or her projects of aggrandisement . _
„ ¦ The Lba. Db'l. [No. 278, Saturday, T...
„ ¦ THE LBA . DB ' l . [ No . 278 , Saturday , too „ •
Pboeessob Fabaday And The Thames'
PBOEESSOB FABADAY AND THE THAMES '
( From a Correspondent . ") Que 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 fly 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 perfectly 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 tit 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 newspapers ) 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 , have 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 01 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 Tinies , 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 of his life . This is not urged in disparagement of him ; for it is no more than to say of an eminent equity draftsman that lie never conducted an Old Bailey ease . 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 . wTith 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 he details no experiment whereby he established the fact that feces formed the basis
of the pollution . Unable to bear the stench of the r iver any longer , the Professor left the Steamer at Hungerford Pier , and found the atmosphere of the streets , except near tlie ffitlley ~ holes , very much purer than that upon the river . Such was , in effect , the log of Professor Faraday ' s voyage up the Thwnaee , and the matter upon which he indited jbb letter to the Times , N « Mr , I flatter myself that if I had enjoyed the
honour of accompanying the Professor upon the river , I could have pointed out to him one or two facts which , appearto 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 humblebut
group of individuals following , not dishonourable profession called mudlarking , 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
gases escaping at the gully-holes , did it not strike him that the greater part of those volatile gases , sulphuretted nydrogen 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 VauxhaO , a singular anomaly would have been manifest to him . After he would have ob
passing Westminster Bridge , - served , 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 poptdous 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 were 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 vjhich , in direct contravention of the law , turn their refuse matter into the Tiiames . 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 gases must saturate the 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 were provided would have the effect of putting half 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 the river , to the detriment of the whole population , liquids ¦ wh ich , properly treated , might produce articles of commerce r To this we liavo 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 , for example ( by far the largest sewer open to the Thames ) , gives passage to such an amount of fresh drainage water from the high grounds of Hampstead , Highgato , and Islington , that the se wage forms a very insignificant proportion of its contents . A man may walk up this drain from the rivor-flkle to Islington without suffering , any extraordinary inconvenience .
The advocates of the scheme for constructing large drams parallel with the Thames have not calculated the dimensions of the work needed . To contain the streams which pass out of the sewers ( sewage and drainage ) , a tunnel twenty yards wide would be scarcely sufficient . The construction of such a tunnel would occupy an indefinite number of years , and would , during the period of its construction , entirel y 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 , wo have had rain , and the Professor might see his cards for at least six inches down , at low water and opposite the Temple-stairs . But the conservators of the Thames should be pricked on to execute justice upon the gas
companies . [ The gas-vrorks ore part , not the whole of the cause . For the Fleet stank ae well aa the Thames , and iu b' . tli the stink has now subsided . Foul cesspools , se-vverj of deposit , and drains of deposit , accumulating the filth of months , to be suddenly washed down en masse to tho river , are the grand evils . Separate interception of sewage proper is the only permanent and complete euro . Rapid substitution of tubular drainage for cesspools au . i mansize sewers of deposit -will progressively diminWi these sudden ernptions of filth . —Ed . Leader . ]
What They" Are Saying In Paris.. . . " E...
WHAT THEY" ARE SAYING IN PARIS . . . . " Except the Exposition , the subject that seems to excite the least interest in Paris at tinpresent moment is the publication of the letters <>! Marshal St . Arnaud . The reasons are , partly , the known character of the man—repulsive and shallow , without any depth that even curiosity would care to explore , mentally and morally the development of an ordinary criminal—and parti ) 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 More : ) , 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 ' a throne ami 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 are 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 . They are known and judged ; and , generally speaking , the mention of their names is equivalcut to a reproach .
u Tins common consent in dislike and contempt , however , produces a somewhat curious result . English travellers and tourists , who struggle into Porisian society armed with a stammering knowledge of French , hearing the names of St . Arnaud , and Morny , and Fould , and Tersigny mentioned casually without any saving clause— -just as a negligent Oriental might spoak of Sheitan without n curse , or of tho Prophet without a blessing—very naturally in their absence of information take to looking upon these gentlemen in quite a serious
point of view—as if their positions corresponded with those of Raglan , Pnlmerston , or Clarendon . Thie mistake loads them sometimes into amusing collision with French wit- —which , however , they rarely understand , drinking the sparkling and acid draught offered them , slowly , after jfc has subsided into tho flat insipidity of a mental translation . Half the errors into which innocent travellers fall ariao from receiving as statement what is meant merely for ** chaff . ** u to the letters of St . Arnaud , however , tho
questions put concerning them are considered too bud , and provoke a kind of indignation . 4 What sensation have they produced in France ! Mon Dieu I Monsieur X . { speaking across the room , and thus attracting the eyes of " all the world" ) , here is a gentleman wants to know what sensation the letters of St . Arnaud have produced P '— What letters ? ' Every one affected at first not to know the things were published ; they had just mum some specimens iix a preliminary puff of tho A font " tcur , but then the more candid admitted being awarcv of the fuut that all officials of u certain rank had been requested to eubaeiribc for a copy , ft" »
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), July 21, 1855, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_21071855/page/14/
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