_Ellesmere_. Of course we cannot always be weighing men with nicety, and saying, “Here is your place, here yours.” _Milverton_. Then, again, what happiness do you confer on men by teaching them to disrespect their superiors in rank, by turning all the embellishments which adorn various stations wrong side out, putting everything in its lowest form, and then saying, “What do you see to admire here?” You do not know what injury you may do a man when you destroy all reverence in him. It will be found out some day that men derive more pleasure and profit from having superiors than from having inferiors. _Dunsford_. It is seldom that I bring you back to your subject, but we are really a long way off at present; and I want to know, Milverton, what you would do specifically in the way of public improvements. Of course you cannot say in an essay what you would do in such matters, but amongst ourselves. In London, for instance. _Milverton_. The first thing for Government to do, Dunsford, in London, or any other great town, is to secure open spaces in it and about it. Trafalgar Square may be dotted with hideous absurdities, but it is an open space. They may collect together there specimens of every variety of meanness and bad taste; but they cannot prevent its being a better thing than if it were covered with houses. Public money is scarcely ever so well employed as in securing bits of waste ground and keeping them as open spaces. Then, as under the most favourable circumstances, we are likely to have too much carbon in the air of any town, we should plant trees to restore the just proportions of the air as far as we can. {161} Trees are also what the heart and the eye desire most in towns. The Boulevards in Paris show the excellent effect of trees against buildings. There are many parts of London where rows of trees might be planted along the streets. The weighty dulness of Portland Place, for instance, might be thus relieved. Of course, in any scheme of public improvements, the getting rid of smoke is one of the first objects. _Ellesmere_. Yes, smoke is a great abuse; but then there is something ludicrous about it, just as there is about sewerage. I believe, myself, that for one person that the Corn Laws have injured, a dozen have had their lives shortened and their happiness abridged in every way by these less palpable nuisances. But there is no grandeur in opposing them—no “good cry” to be raised. And so, as abuses cannot be met in our days but by agitation—a committee, secretaries, clerks, newspapers, and a review—and as agitation in this case holds out fewer inducements than usual, we have gone on year after year being poisoned by these various nuisances, at an incalculable expense of life and money. _Milverton_. There is something in what you say, I think, but you press it too far; for of late these sanitary subjects have worked themselves into notice, as you yourself admit. _Ellesmere_. Late indeed.