The builder may say that the legislature of a country has no right to interfere in an affair of so private a nature as the building of a house; that every man is able to judge for himself in what house he will live; and that it is his own fault if he take a bad one. So long as houses were built to last _more_ than ninety-nine years, and were nearly a mile apart, all this may have been true, but experience has taught us that this does not hold good when applied to towns; it has taught us that cities would be in a much worse state than they now are but for those inefficient laws which exist at the present time; and it has taught us that to choose an abode in ignorance of almost all the necessary requirements which constitute a healthful dwelling is a species of ignorance by no means of the blissful family. To distinguish good from evil in every object which surrounds us is one of the necessities of our nature; to have “a foe under foot,” {105} a foe overhead, and a foe on every side, without a determination to subdue this legion, does not say much for the wisdom either of the governors, or the governed; and to care nothing about the expenditure of millions collected annually for local purposes, is no proof of confidence in the governors, is no proof of the happiness or wisdom of the governed; it may however prove, that the people are “silly sheep” {106} who may be shorn by any tool, at the bidding of any despot. Experience has proved that no more healthful situation for a town can be chosen, than elevated ground above the banks of a pure stream; and those who fixed on the south portion of the Westbourn district, and on the site of the old village of Paddington, as spots for their dwellings, could not have been ignorant either of the material advantages such situations afforded, or of the effects produced both on the mind and body by the beauty and salubrity of these localities. If we spoke of the beauties of Paddington to those whose acquaintance with this place is of recent date, they would naturally think we were about to describe the gorgeous mansions of the fashionable “Tyburnia.” But the old village of Tybourn, or Westbourn, and the new town of Pædings, were surrounded by a greater combination of natural beauty than those who have not studied the ancient topography of this district can well conceive. Out of thirty-seven districts, into which, for certain special purposes, the Registrar-General has arranged London and its vicinity, in a series of excellent tables contained in his very valuable Report on Cholera, we find that there are only four parishes of greater average elevation than Paddington; the estimated elevation of this parish above Trinity high watermark being seventy-six feet; Pancras eighty; Islington eighty-eight; Marylebone one hundred; and Hampstead three hundred and fifty.