"These wretched tenements," writes D'Israeli, "seldom consisted of more than two rooms, in one of which the whole family, however numerous, were obliged to sleep, without distinction of age or sex or suffering. With the water streaming down the walls, the light distinguished through the roof, with no hearth even in winter, the virtuous mother in the sacred pangs of child-birth gives forth another victim to our thoughtless civilisation, surrounded by three generations, whose inevitable presence is more painful than her sufferings in that hour of travail; while the father of her coming child, in another corner of the sordid chamber, lies stricken by that typhus which his contaminating dwelling has breathed into his veins, and for whose next prey is perhaps destined his new-born child. These swarming walls had neither windows nor doors sufficient to keep out the weather or admit the sun or supply the means of ventilation, the humid or putrid roof of thatch exhaling malaria like all other decaying vegetable matter. The dwelling rooms were neither boarded nor paved; and whether it were that some were situate in low and damp places, occasionally flooded by the river and usually much below the level of the road, or that the springs, as was often the case, would burst through the mud floor, the ground was at no time better than so much clay, while sometimes you might see little channels cut from the centre under the doorways to carry off the water, and the door itself removed from its hinges, a resting place for infancy in its deluged home. These hovels were, in many instances, not provided with the commonest conveniences of the rudest police; contiguous to every door might be observed the dung heap on which every kind of filth was accumulated for the purpose of being disposed of for manure, so that when the poor man opened his narrow habitation in the hope of refreshing it with the breeze of summer, he was met with a mixture of gases from reeking dung-hills." Science, medicine, philanthropy, sanitary engineering and enlightened local government have done something to remove many of the horrible things D'Israeli describes, but one cannot say that the law has co-operated with much vigour in this beneficent crusade. Without law and compulsion the work will never be done as thoroughly as is necessary throughout the length and breadth of the land.