for a healthy
adult is about eight hundred cubic feet. The air which is breathed
becomes so rapidly impure, that a constant supply of fresh air must be
kept up to make the air of the shut-up space fit for breathing. The
following are some amounts of space per head which are met with in
practice:--

Artizan rooms 200 cubic feet.
Metropolitan Lodging
Houses 240 "
Poor Law Board Dormitories 300 "
Barrack Regulation 60 "
The best Hospitals 1,500 to 2,000
cubic feet.]

Shut up a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by
rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he
will die in the same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole
of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children
born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old,
principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who
was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him
out of his hold to die in the open air. Instead of dying, he revived,
and eventually got well. He was cured by the pure air.

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 "ro