ravelled through some of the remote cities of Africa and Asia, and
known what it is to be literally unable to dismount from a horse. Street
lighting was in its early infancy. In Shakespeare's time every man of
substance was compelled to hang a lighted lantern outside his house
from dusk to curfew, during a few weeks of midwinter, and that was all.

Of all these defects the lack of cleanliness was the vital one, and the
consequences of the neglect or ignorance of the first laws of sanitation
may be imagined. Plague was never far away. Every few years there would
be a visitation, mild or severe, and there was no effective remedy known
to the people. As in the time of the great plague of London, herbs and
cooling drinks were employed, fresh air was in demand, and there was
much burning of spices. Shakespeare was a baby in arms when a visitation
of the plague gave nearly fifteen per cent. of the town's population to
the graveyard or its substitute, the plague pit.

Now and again the Avon would overflow its banks and flood the
surrounding country. Not only would such a disaster increase the ague
and rheumatism that are never far removed from dwellers by the
river-side, but a late summer flood might damage the crops on low-lying
lands, or carry away corn that had been cut but not carted, and then, as
Stratford was not readily accessible, the prices of food stuff would
rise despite the corporation's efforts, and actual famine was not
unknown.

Fires, too, were common. Doubtless a few arose from the overheating of
corn in barns and stacks, and some from the absence of chimneys to so
many houses. The corporation did what it could, but there were no
resources adequate to deal with a conflagration, for all that the Avon
ran at the foot of the town. They came to the conclusion in 1582 that
the absence of chimneys was a fruitful source of disaster, and ordered
every householder to build one. They also ordered every burgess to
provide himself with a bucket. Looking back to the times, it is not easy
to say that the corporation of Stratford was really backward; its
members did all that the people of a little town in the heart of
Warwickshire could have been expected to do, and there would seem to
have been no lack of public spirit, no falling away from continuous
endeavour, no shirking of onerous duties. Every man had his work to do
in the public service, and those who failed were punished.

When we look round at our busy manufactur