The Express.
London, England, 1864-08-05 00:00:00

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PRINCESA &.

THIS IMEOIL BORN TO 000 D LOCI. Mr. D. Murray.
And THE. BULLETS OF LONDON. Messrs. J. N. Bay, David
Fisher. D. Murray, J. Nelson, H Forrester, and H. Mellon:
Mrs. H. Marston, Seisms Bassett sad Gwynn*.

THIS ITINUNI. MI BL►VI OT MIMI— Singing by
Mesdames Leseshal, Canino:a, sad Mr. H. BoYar.—Dancing by
Maine. C. Meplaa.—Aad Tin TALLYILAY.

1111911 WASIK AT ZONDOW
Tlll9 Dlt /iOOMMI. .Albsrases. sb. Sars.
TO-XORJ.OW —IIOOMIOI. 4h. 10M.. . Aliareas. th. 27si.

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 5.

Tut: present season is • hint to us that what
we are accustomed to call our old-fashioned sum-
mers have not altogether vanished from our tem-
perate zone. When we experience, as we did all
last month, what our elder generation imagines as
the proper heat of summer, we are led to ask our-
selves whether we are any better able to contend
with the effects of heat than our fathers were. In
moat of the external conditions of life we have
advanced in some proportion to the improvement
of knowledge and the arts ; but does not a hot
summer bring u many inconveniences as it
did a hundred years ago? In dealing with
the winter cold we have certainly advanced.
It is no longer the rule that we can have
water, in • hard frost, only by the
dangerous process of melting snow, day and night,
within the kitchen and nursery fenders, causing
coughs and sore throats among the servants and
children. We cover up our waterpipes from the
external air, and spread a more equable and con-
stant warmth through our dwellings. Our streets
are better kept ; and the citizens are more regu-
larly compelled to clear the frozen pavement before
their doors, and to destroy the slides made by
thoughtless boys. tinder the new poor-law, and
by organized charity, there is more resource for
frozen-out gardeners, and other labourers whose
work is suspended by the cold ; and the last act of
the recent session was that which will provide a
nightly shelter and a breakfast for the houseless
poor. All the while, it seems scarcely to have
occurred to us that the hot season brings its duties
and its charities as well sa the cold. The opulent
classes may have their modern resources—such as
ice at • penny • pound ; and the watering of the
streets is a blessing to us all.; but there is more
for us to do. The water supply is far from
being so copious and accessible as it ought to be,
though it is an important step gained that the
water companies are now compelled to cover over
their reservoirs, and thus to keep the supply cooler
and cleaner. There are many streets in London
and innumerable courts and alleys where the
pumps run dry, and where the water, which is
still to be got, is so disagreeable and unwholesome
as to afford only too good an excuse for resort to
the public-house. We ought to have found out
long ago that there is little use in declaiming
against drunkenness in regions where the water is
undrinkable. It is true, there are many more cowl
in London than there ever were before ; but this
is not a resource for the very poor, and even where
careful parents deny themselves indulgences for
the sake of buying milk for their children, it too
often happens that the insufficient drainage anal
bad air of close courts and overcrowded alleys
turns the milk sour almost before it could be used.
When we imported from Liverpool the blessed de-
vice of street fountains, we thought we saw our
way out of much of this evil, but has it turned
out so ? We rejoined in the thought of the
million of thirsty people who could henceforth
obtain by the way side free draughts of
cool water. We thought of the children who
live in the open air in fair weather—of
the infants who need no longer be feverish
and fretful from thirst, of the boys who would
cease to wrangle and fight fronil,sheer bodily un-
easiness, and of the women who would cease to be
customers at the public-house when the fountains
were opened to them. We thought of the cattle
and horses which would keep their docility through
all the heat while there were troughs in the hot
street ; and we thought yet more of the dogs—no
longer to be dreaded when August came in. We
too hastily assumed that the thing was done when
one foungaia after another was provided by private
benevolence, amidst such universal applause that
nobody doubted of such an ample supply as would
make London and all our large towns equal, in this
respect, to the towns of Germany, Switzerland,
and Northern Italy. But what is the fact The;
fact is that at this day we see in the newspapers
emphatic statements of the decline of this
beat and most unexceptionable of charities. We
see every day advertisements urging upon us the
claim of the existing fountains for support, and
complaints that even in such • summer as this the
money for setting the water flowing is not forth-
coming. We may see this for ourselves. While
the well-to-do citizens are sitting in shaded rooms,
and buying fruits for lunch and dessert, and ice
for their wine and water and milk, they are giving
nothing to the fountain in the street which is dry
and dusty and out of order, disappointing all
corners in the hour of their need. If the profuse
charity of London, supposed to be never-
failing while any appeals remain to be made to it,
will not take this direction, even in the dog-days
of 1864, surely provision must be made by other
means. Perhaps it is as much as could be expected
that private benevolence should lead the way in
exhibiting an invention new in England, however
familiar to the travelling class of citizens. Perhaps
it is natural that the original benefactors should
have assumed that if they incurred the ezpense of
erectiel fountains, and setting the water running,
the eeighburhooa: would keep them in repair and,
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.r.;§ done ; and either the water fails, or it is
Grained from the purses of the benefactors, who
expected a different return for their gift. We
have taken • great step by cutting off from
the river one-third of the sewage of London ; and