But it seems to me also, that in such a state of society, when--as it was once well put--"every one has stopped running about like rats:"--that those who work hard, whether with muscle or with brain, would not be surrounded, as now, with every circumstance which tempts toward drink; by every circumstance which depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence itself; by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad occupations, which weaken the muscles, cramp the chest, disorder the digestion. Let any rational man, fresh from the country--in which I presume God, having made it, meant all men, more or less, to live--go through the back streets of any city, or through whole districts of the "black countries" of England: and then ask himself--Is it the will of God that His human children should live and toil in such dens, such deserts, such dark places of the earth? Let him ask himself--Can they live and toil there without contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own stupidity and emptiness? When I run through, by rail, certain parts of the iron-producing country--streets of furnaces, collieries, slag heaps, mud, slop, brick house-rows, smoke, dirt--and that is all; and when I am told, whether truly or falsely, that the main thing which the well-paid and well-fed men of those abominable wastes care for is--good fighting-dogs: I can only answer, that I am not surprised.