The most common result of breathing impure air, amongst adults, is fever. The heaviest municipal tax, said Dr. Southwood Smith, is the _fever tax_. It is estimated that in Liverpool some seven thousand persons are yearly attacked by fever, of whom about five hundred die. Fever usually attacks persons of between twenty and thirty, or those who generally have small families depending on them for support. Hence deaths from fever, by causing widowhood and orphanage, impose a very heavy tax upon the inhabitants of all the large manufacturing towns. Dr. Playfair, after carefully considering the question, is of opinion that the total pecuniary loss inflicted on the county of Lancashire from _preventible_ disease, sickness, and death, amounts to not less than five millions sterling annually. But this is only the physical and pecuniary loss. The moral loss is infinitely greater. Where are now the "happy humble swains" and the "gentle shepherds" of the old English poets? At the present time, they are nowhere to be found. The modern Strephon and Phyllis are a very humble pair, living in a clay-floored cottage, and maintaining a family on from twelve to fifteen shillings a week. And so far from Strephon spending his time in sitting by a purling stream playing "roundelays" upon a pipe,--poor fellow! he can scarcely afford to smoke one, his hours of labour are so long, and his wages are so small. As for Daphnis, he is a lout, and can neither read nor write; nor is his Chloe any better. Phineas Fletcher thus sang of "The Shepherd's Home:"-- "Thrice, oh, thrice happie shepherd's life and state! When courts are happinesse, unhappie pawns! His cottage low, and safely humble gate. Shuts out proud Fortune, with her scorns and fawns: No feared treason breaks his quiet sleep: Singing all day, his flocks he learns to keep: Himself as innocent as are his simple sheep. His certain life, that never can deceive him, Is full of thousand sweets and rich content: The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him With coolest shades, till noontide's rage is spent: His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas Of troublous world, nor lost in slothful ease; Pleased and full blest he lives, when he his God can please.' Where, oh where, has this gentle shepherd gone? Have spinning-jennies swallowed him up? Alas! as was observed of Mrs. Harris, "there's no such a person." Did he _ever_ exist? We have a strong suspicion that he never did, save in the imaginations of poets.