Other needs exist, hardly second to that of better dwellings, and these it is in the power of local authorities to meet, in a way of which few reformers seem to be aware. The Town Councils may provide means of recreation and instruction--libraries, playgrounds, and public baths. School Boards may provide, not only elementary instruction, but give a character to education, and use their buildings as centres for the meetings, classes, and recreation of the old scholars. Boards of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards, the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove abuses for which Englishmen make no defence. Wise Town Councils, conscious of the mission they have inherited, could destroy every court and crowded alley and put in their places healthy dwellings; they could make water so cheap and bathing-places so common that cleanliness should no longer be a hard virtue; they could open playgrounds, and take away from a city the reproach of its gutter-children; they could provide gardens, libraries, and conversation-rooms, and make the pleasures of intercourse a delight to the poor, as it is a delight to the rich; they could open picture galleries and concerts, and give to all that pleasure which comes as surely from a common as from a private possession; they could light and clean the streets of the poor quarters; they could stamp out disease, and by enforcing regulations against smoke and all uncleanness limit the destructiveness of trade and lengthen the span of life; they could empty the streets of the boys and girls, too big for the narrow homes, too small for the clubs and public-houses, by opening for them playrooms and gymnasia; they could help the strong and hopeful to emigrate; they could give medicine to heal the sick, money to the old and poor, a training for the neglected, and a home for the friendless. With this power in the hands of Town Councils, and with our great towns in such a state that a fact as to their condition shocks the nation, there is no need to wait for parliamentary action. The course on which the authorities are asked to enter is no untried one.