1857. DR. LETHEBY'S REPORT. 139 born, the patient cast down with fever, and the corpse waiting for interment, have no separation from each other and from the rest of the inmates.' These horrors Dr. Letheby declared not to be at all exceptional. He cited other instances of the dreadful state of degradation which his examinations revealed. In Rose-alley near Houndsditch he found a row of houses, all in a shockingly dirty and ruinous condition, in which were seventy-six rooms, letting for sums varying from fifteen pence to twenty-one pence each. These rooms were inhabited by sixty-three families, consisting of two hundred and fifty-two persons. In one room there were a man, two women, two children, and the corpse of a girl who having died in child-birth a few days before his visit, was still lying on the bare ground without shroud or coffin. Of course it was a hotbed of every kind of loathsome and infectious disease. Only a short time before Dr. Letheby paid his visit to Rose-alley a fever had passed from room to room, attacking almost every one of the adult males who occupied these pestiferous dens. Dr. Letheby states that he found the air so close and infectious that he endeavoured to ascertain, by chemical analysis, whether it did not contain some peculiar product of decomposition, that imparted to it its foul odour and its rare power of engendering disease. He found that it was not only deficient in oxygen, but contained three times the usual proportion of carbonic acid, besides a quantity of aqueous vapour charged with alkaline matter that stank abominably, the product of putrefaction and of various fetid and stagnant exhalations. Dr. Letheby pointed out that the horrors which his researches had brought to light were pregnant not only with terrible physical, but with terrible moral retribution to the society in which they were permitted to flourish. He spoke in eloquent terms of the deadlier moral pestilence that stalks side by side with the physical pestilence, blighting the existence of a rising population, rendering their hearts hopeless, their acts ruffianly and incestuous, and causing them to scatter the seeds of crime, turbulence, and pauperism. The remedies that Dr. Letheby suggested for these evils were, to enforce the registration of common lodging-houses, and to control, through officers of health, the number and condition of their inmates. A more likely remedy, and one that had been suggested before, and has often been recommended since, was that of bringing the metropolis under the control of a single municipality, elected by the ratepayers of the various districts. However, it must be allowed that the state of things which Dr. Letheby held up to the light was by no means peculiar to London. Similar dens of filth and iniquity were to be found in many parts of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, and indeed in most of the large, as well as in many of the smaller towns of the British empire. There can be no doubt, too, that the attention which was drawn to the subject at this time by Dr. Letheby's reports has led to a considerable improvement, and that these dens and human sties have been removed or improved. Lord Palmerston devoted to the work of cleansing this Augean stable the same vigour and energy that he had displayed in carrying on the war; and if such scenes as Dr. Letheby describes have become almost exceptional in our day, we owe it in great measure to the firmness and resolution with which Lord Palmerston took up the question, and for which, more perhaps than for anything else he ever did, he deserved the gratitude of posterity. A great work was done by him; but though he removed the more glaring evils, much remains to be done, and is being done, not only through direct legislation on this subject-though by that much has been effected-but by the extension to all classes of the community of an education which will instigate and enable them to rise out of 1857. MANCHESTER ART-TREASURES EXHIBITION. 141 degradation similar to that which Dr. Letheby so vividly depicted to his horrified countrymen. On Thursday April the 30th the new parliament assembled, and Mr. Evelyn Denison, the nominee of the government, was chosen without opposition to be the speaker of the House of Commons. The formal opening of the legislature took place on the Thursday following by commission, the interval having, as usual, been spent in swearing-in the members and other preliminary formalities. During the interval the Art-Treasures Exhibition in Manchester had been publicly opened. The scope and object of the exhibition is sufficiently indicated by its name. The building which contained the treasures intended for exhibition was constructed on a plan suggested by the great Crystal Palace, which had been used, as we have seen, to contain the various articles exhibited in 1851; and, considering the difference in size of the two buildings, was not unworthy of its great model. Prince Albert had promised to preside at the opening ceremony; but the death of the duchess of Gloucester, one of the Queen's aunts, which happened a day or two before the ceremony, would, according to the usual rules of court etiquette, have prevented the prince from fulfilling the engagement into which he had entered. Nevertheless he did fulfil it; and in doing so stated his conviction that in attending he was acting in accordance with what he was sure would have been the wish of the deceased lady herself. This sensible conduct on the part of the prince prevented a great disappointment, which would have damped an undertaking eminently deserving of royal patronage and encouragement, and the great humanising objects of which no one more cordially appreciated or more zealously promoted than the prince himself. The articles exhibited were arranged in seven principal sections: 1. Paintings by ancient masters. 2. Paintings by modern masters. 3. British portrait-gallery. 4. Sculpture. 5. Museum of ornamental art. 6. Water-colour drawings. 7. Historical miniatures. This artistic, scientific, and historical arrangement shows the immense progress that Manchester had made in culture and civilisation since the period at which this work commences. That progress also extended to the numerous and populous towns and districts which were intimately connected with Manchester by the trade they carried on with and through the emporium of the manufacturing districts, and which had recently been brought into more rapid and frequent communication with it by the network of railways-converging from all quarters on the great manufacturing metropolis - which had been constructed. The exhibition conduced in no slight degree to carry forward that civilising advance of which it was a conspicuous evidence. The part taken by Prince Albert in the opening ceremony of the Manchester Exhibition was by no means the only proof he gave about this time of a deep interest in everything calculated to raise and elevate the nation. His desire to do this was also manifested by the interest he evinced in an educational conference which was held at Willis's Rooms, over the deliberations of which he presided, and by doing so obtained for the important subject which the conference assembled to discuss a degree of attention that it would not otherwise have obtained. It was a sign of the times to see a prince taking part in a meeting held for such a purpose; and assuredly Prince Albert showed on this, as on so many other occasions, a delicate appreciation of the nature and duties of his position as consort of the Queen, not only in what he did and said, but also in what he abstained from doing and saying. His introductory speech was valuable not only on account of the sanction it gave to the inquiry that the conference had assembled to make, but also 1857. PRINCE ALBERT ON EDUCATION. 143 on account of the valuable light it threw on the subject under consideration. 'We find,' said the prince, 'on the one hand the wish to see secular and religious instruction separated, and the former recognised as an intimate and inherent right to which each member of society has a claim, and which ought not to be denied to him if he refuses to take along with it the inculcation of a particular dogma, to which he objects as unsound; while we see on the other hand the doctrine asserted that no education can be sound which does not rest on religious instruction, and that religious truth is too sound to be modified and tampered with, even in its minutest deductions, for the sake of procuring a general agreement.' A burst of loud assenting cheers here showed that the latter part of this statement expressed the views and opinions of the great majority of those present. 'Gentlemen,' proceeded the prince, if these differences were to have been discussed here to-day, I should not have been able to respond to your invitation to take the chair, as I should have thought it inconsistent with the position which I occupy, and with the duty I owe to the Queen and the country at large. I see those here before me who have taken a leading part in these important discussions; and I am happy to meet them on a neutral ground, happy to find that there is a neutral ground on which their varied talents and abilities can be brought to bear in communion upon the common object, and proud and grateful to them that they should have allowed me to preside over them, for the purpose of working together in the common vineyard. I feel that the greatest benefit must arise to the cause we have all so much at heart by the mere free exchange of your thoughts and various experience. You may well be proud, gentlemen, of the results achieved by your rival efforts, and may point to the fact that since the beginning of the century, while the popula |