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the perfect adaptation of drainage, water-supply,
scavenage and ventilation to the purposes they
should respectively fulfil; such cleanliness, as
consists in carrying away by these means, inoffensively,
all refuse materials of life—gaseous,
solid or fluid, from the person, the house, the
factory or the thoroughfare, so soon as possible
after their formation, and with as near an approach,
as their several natures allow, to one continuous
current of removal.
To realise for London this conception of how a
city should cleanse itself, may involve, no doubt,
the perfection of numberless details. Yet, most
of all, it would pre-suppose a comprehensive
organisation of plan and method: not alone for
that intramural unity of system which is needful
for all the works, not least for those of drainage
and water-supply; but, equally, to harmonise these
works with other extramural arrangements for
utilising to the country the boundless wealth of
metropolitan refuse—for distributing to the uses
of agriculture what is then rescued from the
character of filth—for requiting to the fields in
gifts for vegetation, what they have rendered to
the town in food for man.
How far the construction of London has proceeded
on the recognition of such objects, or how
far the advantages of such a plan have been
realised, it could only be a mockery to ask. Our
metropolis, by successive accretions, has covered