Besides the general discontent and turn-out just noticed, which Mrs. Grey attributes to the waywardness of human nature, we must introduce these facts. The morals of these districts have been highly extolled, and both Mr. and Mrs. Grey strongly reiterate the eulogium. Mrs. Grey does not recollect _two_ instances of intoxication amongst the hinds in her life; we saw many one day, as already stated. In the Fourth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, even while advocating “the hinding system,” we find these singular paragraphs: “Whatever general merits may or may not otherwise have distinguished Northumberland and Durham from more pauperized districts, these counties must not lay claim to superiority in reference to bastardy, for in no part of England was bastardy more prevalent than in portions of this district, and in none was the practice of relief to the mother more pertinaciously upheld. The Newcastle parishes of All Saints’ and St. Andrews, together with the parishes of Sunderland and Berwick, _are the only places we can call to mind_ where a weekly allowance for every legitimate child was not a matter of course. “The difficulties of inducing children in competent circumstances to contribute to the support of their aged parents (whose maintenance the parish had hitherto taken off their hands), were quite as great, if not relatively greater, considering the wages of labour, in the north as in the south.” So much for morals; now for the Arcadian cottages. The Newcastle Courant of November 23d, 1838, stated that “Thomas Dodds, Esq., surgeon, read a very valuable paper on ‘Improvement in Cottage Architecture, and the domestic comfort of the peasantry of North Northumberland.’ Mr. Dodds’ long personal observation, arising from his medical practice,” it is stated, “peculiarly qualified him for the discussion of this important and interesting subject,” and Mr. Dodds very summarily and pithily characterized these abodes as “a disgrace to Northumberland.” He contrasted them with “the splendid edifices, commemorative columns, and magnificent streets, which the people of Northumberland are raising.” He said, “The _miserable tenements of numbers of this class_ are less carefully constructed than the stables of their horses, formed, as they are, _in a majority of cases, of only one apartment_, open to the roof, with earthen floor, and four-paned windows that dim the light of day, a part of which is often occupied by the cow; and where the decencies of life cannot be observed, there being no separate apartments for the females of the family, one of whom is often a stranger in the capacity of a servant to work ‘the bondage.’” He represented them equally detrimental to health as to comfort and morals; and gave many instances from personal observation, especially a case at that moment of a family of eight persons, near Alnwick, all lying ill of typhus fever in their one room with the corpse of one of them laid out in the midst of them.