EACH year’s intimacy with the interesting people of whom I have written has afforded fresh information, so that I find myself embarrassed with a multitude of facts; and after six years’ experience, selection from the accumulation of details is the only difficulty. It would be easy to multiply scenes of interest, equalling any already described; but if enough have been given to awaken sympathy, and stimulate to exertion, my object is accomplished. A few observations on subjects of great importance, not prominently brought forward in any of the preceding narratives, will be sufficient to close the whole. One of the greatest obstacles which meets those who are striving to improve the homes of the poor is the construction of dwellings. There are whole streets of houses in this neighbourhood, whose appearance gives you the idea that they were originally designed for a higher class of people; and yet the builder must have known that the supply of such houses was already much beyond the demand, and that, if let at all, the inmates must be poor. Nothing, however, adapts them for this class of inhabitants. Five or six families may occasionally be found in one such house, with no more provision for health, comfort, and decency, than ought to be made for each one. The houses professedly erected for the poor are still more deficient. They are sometimes built below the level of the road, so that the drainage is _to_ them, instead of _from_ them. The basements are consequently fearfully damp, and the whole atmosphere, in every part of the house, is impregnated with the effluvia from stagnant sewage.