From what may be called one river side
extremity of South London, we skip over the
central water-side parishes, and go to the
opposite extremity of the metropolis to find at
Greenwich our next healthiest district. Like
Lambeth, this place lies low, is badly drained,
and has a poor class of houses, and
consequently of people. The secret of its position on
the scale of health is to be found in the fact
that the population is not dense, being only
twenty-one to an acre; that it has a fine park
for a playground, and is in near neighbourhood
to Blackheath, and thence to the open and
healthy hills and fields of Kent.

Now we must return again to the centre of
London for its next most healthy parish. It
is St. Martin's-in-the-Fields; but having, it is
almost needless to say, no rural character,
except by name. Trafalgar Square, with its
fountains, is almost its only enjoyable open
space. The density of population is not over
great for such a position; the rental high;
the deaths two hundred and forty to ten
thousand living each year.

Away east again for our next and last parish
that stands above the general average of
London. Stepney is the place, with its
multitude of small houses at low rentals, It has
its water from the river Lea, and its
inhabitants have not very far to go when they
wish for a ramble in the fields. Its yearly
contribution to our total mortality is two
hundred and forty-two out of ten thousand
souls.

And here a dark line has to be drawn; for
Stepney is close down upon the average
mortality of all London. Each parish already
named pays less than the average tribute to
death—those presently to be enumerated pay
more. The contributions vary from Clerkenwell,
which is the least unhealthy on the black
list to Whitechapel, which is the most
unhealthy. This last parish indeed is the worst
in all the metropolis. Between the two
extremes of insalubrity, the districts range in
the following order: Clerkenwell, brought
down in the scale by its nests of poverty, and
doubtless, by its huge over-gorged grave-yard.
Bethnal Green, with its host of small houses,
and average rental of only £9. The Strand—
the great thoroughfare of fine shops—with a
back neighbourhood of filthy alleys and river-side
abominations. Shoreditch, with its stock
of poor people and old clothes. Westminster
regal,—historical Westminster—raised but
two feet above the water level, and famous
alike for its abbey, its palace, and its rookerie's.
Bermondsey, just level with the water line,
and poisoned by open drains and unsavoury
factories. Rotherhithe, damp and foggy.
St. Giles's, another spot renowned for vice,
poverty, and dirt. St. George's, Southwark,
low, poor, and densely crowded. Next come
the two portions of the City of London,
technically described as East London and West
London, being in fact those parts beyond the
centre surrounding the Mansion House—the
portions indeed especially indulged with the
frowsiness of Cripplegate and the choked-up
smells of Leadenhall; the abominations of
Smithfield; the exhalations of the Fleet ditch;
the fever- engendering closeness of the courts
off Fleet Street; and the smoky, ill-smelling
sinuosities of Whitefriars. Next below these
"City of London districts " we have Holborn,
with a density of two hundred and thirty-seven
to an acre, and a yearly mortality of two
hundred and sixty-six to ten thousand living.
Then St. George's in the East, with a population
far less closely packed than that of Holborn,
yet sending two hundred and eighty-nine souls
to judgment every year out of ten thousand
living. Next St. Saviour's and St. Olave's,
the two other Southwark parishes who drink
Thames water taken from the stream near
their own bridge, and therefore below the
Fleet ditch. St. Luke's, the locality of another
rookery. And, lastly, the zero of this register,
Whitechapel—with its shambles, its poverty,
its vice, and its heavy quota of two hundred
and ninety deaths a year out of ten thousand
living.

This glance at the results displayed in the
registrar's thick volume of figures, published
last year, gives us not only an idea of the
curious information to be gleaned from the
labours of Mr. Farr and his brother officers,
but shows also how unevenly death visits the
different portions of our huge city. If from
our family of two millions the destroyer takes
a thousand souls a week to their final account,
the first and most certain to fall victims
are those who, from ignorance, or recklessness,
or poverty, outrage the natural laws by which
alone health and life can be preserved.

A comparison between the chances of death
which the Londoner runs as compared with
those suffered by his fellow countrymen in
other districts of England, might be put
familiarly somewhat after this fashion. If a
man's acquaintances were fixed at fifty-two in
number, and they lived in scattered places
over England, he would annually lose one by
death in forty-five. If they lived in the south-
eastern counties, the loss would be at the
lower rate of one in fifty-two. If they all
lived in London, he would lose one out of
thirty-nine.

This additional mortality is the penalty now
being, day by day, inflicted upon sinners
against sanitary laws in the English
metropolis.

BED.

"Oh, Sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole!"

WAS the heart's cry of the Ancient Mariner
at the recollection of the blessed moment
when the fearful curse of life in death fell off
him, and the heavenly sleep first " slid into
his soul." " Blessings on sleep! " said honest
Sancho Panza: " it wraps one all round like a
mantle! "—a mantle for the weary human