to a hundred other villages in England, and more particularly Scotland:—­’The village of Braithwaite, for example, contains, in proportion to its population, more dirt, disease, and death than any decent town.  It is one of the most romantic and filthy villages in England, and yet it might easily be made one of the cleanest and neatest.  There are lanes, alleys, and courts in almost all small towns and villages, in which the mortality is greater far than that of our great towns; nay, in hamlets, and isolated farmhouses in this, as in many other country districts, there is often more sickness in proportion to the population than in cities; and I could point out within a circuit of a few miles, localities in which, during the last few years, scrofula, small-pox, measles, and typhus fever have left their ravages; and which, with proper care and cleanliness, might, I firmly believe, have escaped.  But that disease, and especially infectious disease, haunts all ill-drained, ill-cleansed, and ill-ventilated places in both town and country, there are now few intelligent persons that require to be convinced; and the question has come to be with the well-informed part of the public, as it has long been the question with medical men—­has not the time now arrived to compel those who harbour the filth and the contagion that carry off one-half of mankind, to expel those enemies to the human race?  The innumerable statistical inquiries of the last ten years on this subject, all go to prove that dirt, squalor, close air, and stagnant water, are the causes of one-half the mortality of mankind in civilised countries.  The majority of thinking people of all classes—­and these, though a small minority of mankind, are the directors of every great social movement—­are coming to see that we must proceed with this sanitary business at once; and that, if not by mild means, then by a little wholesome compulsion, we must oblige the owners of property haunted by death and contagion, to yield to the demands of society.  If a man may not harbour a ferocious bull-dog in his alley, is he to keep a noisome ditch running at large there?—­and if he may not hold a main of fighting cocks, is he to keep cholera and typhus in his house?  For my part, I cannot see, if a justice of the peace can stop a man from knocking me down with a bludgeon, why he should not be authorised to interfere to save me from a typhus fever; and if he can prevent boys from endangering the lives of passengers by firing guns on the high roads, why he should not also be enabled to forbid the open sewers and other nuisances, which, if not so noisy, are even more dangerous.  A railway company pays heavily for the lives and limbs of passengers sacrificed by the neglect or rashness of its officials—­should not a town be equally liable for the losses caused by a public violation of the laws of health?  We move slowly in this neighbourhood, disliking changes, and hold strongly, while the rest of the world is advancing, to the old ideas; yet even Wordsworth’s consecration of this sentiment to Cumberland—­