“We know,” says an experienced and talented writer, “no country of Europe where there is so little disposition on the part of the people as in ours to give themselves even the exhilarating kind of ablution which is derived from bathing. Dirty faces, dirty clothes, dirty houses,--in fine, dirt all over,--are the characteristics of our people; and yet, bad as they are (from necessity generally), we know that there are worse effects underneath the surface, for where physical dirt is seen, there also presides _moral degradation_.” It is true that within the last few years many praiseworthy exertions have been used for the purpose of establishing baths and wash-houses for the poor, which it is to be hoped will meet with further encouragement and extension; but as fashion rules a large portion of mankind, even in physic, we would suggest, that in order to secure a more complete and general use of personal ablution, our leaders of fashion and the upper classes who have so much to say on the subject of wash and bath-houses for the poor, should set the example by establishing baths, after the custom of the Orientals, in their own private residences; for, in spite of the increase of wealth and luxury, of the splendour and extent of the houses of recent erection in this country, baths are very far from being universal. Much may also be attained by patronising the few excellent but neglected public baths of this great metropolis; such measures would not only have the effect of increasing the number of those baths already established, but of inducing, from the increased facility, that personal purification, which ultimately would be found to be indispensable. “_Usus est altera natura._” In concluding these our remarks on the three grand essentials to life, we would observe that it is astonishing with what little amount of food a human being may live in health and strength, (we of course allude to those who eat to live,) when supplied in due proportion with the requisites for vitality,--namely, LIGHT, AIR, and WATER. Further, we would ask, what can be more monstrous in this enlightened age, so outrageous of every principle of reason--so contrary to daily experience and common sense, as “the barring-out the free fresh air, and the meting-out to mortals of Heaven’s light,” by that blot on civilization, the window-tax,--a tax which originated in iniquity,[5] at a time, too, when so much is being agitated about sanitary measures?[6] We neglect the first principles of vitality, to go groping into sewers and cesspools, which we repeat are but secondary considerations, the _ultimatum_ of which will prove to be but little better than the relief of the olfactories, to tickle the gustatory nerves by furnishing for our palates, in the shape of Thames water, the filthy abominations of an overgrown city.