"Neither is here experienced the inconvenience of gutters, which, elsewhere, inundate passengers; and in storms, heavy rains, and floods, stop the way. The English have an ingenious method of getting rid of these rainy torrents; their roofs are almost flat, and the front wall, rising above the upper floor, forms a double slope like our terraces. The waters, being thus collected, descend by a spout into the drains, and are lost in the great common sewer under the middle of the streets. Sometimes they are led into cisterns. It is not that London is destitute of this precious element; a small river, brought at an immense expense, from a great distance; and immense engines, worked by the Thames, distribute the water in all quarters. "Sea coal, whose black dust attaches so easily to furniture and clothes, is kept in cellars under the footway. In a word, Stables, and, with them, dunghills, with the smells inseparable from them, occupy back streets, and have no communication with the inhabited houses. The lamps are placed on both sides of the street, upon posts a little elevated; they are very numerous, and are always lighted before sunset.... "They have even gone so far as to pave, with flat stones, those places where you cross the street, to make an easier communication from one side to the other, and these paths are swept. Carriages are not driven at a dangerous pace in the interior of the city; lighter equipages go the same pace as the humblest coach. The horses--so swift on the road, that they seem to fly rather than run, forgetting their rapid pace--only go a gentle trot; and we never see Coachmen endeavouring to pass by and break the line at the peril of the passenger." If I want to give a living touch to this book, I must still quote, because, to be honest, I must do it. Others assimilate bodily, or paraphrase facts: then, they are "men of genius," and they call me, in reviews, "a mere compiler." Granted; I take the latter as a compliment, for I give the very living age, and sink myself; because the quotations are better than can now be written--they are _of the time_. We have novels--we have plays--mostly imaginative, because of the ignorance of the writer; but an honest historian ought only to give the history of the times as he has found it, and, to any one who has conscientiously worked, the crass ignorance, and superficial knowledge, of the present time is stupendous. The suburbs of London were still being built, and it is pleasant to read an _outside_ criticism upon them.