penury and disease fed upon the vitals of a miserable
population!

The contrast between the interior of the town and its external
aspect, was as striking as it was full of pain. With the
exception of the dull high street, which had the usual
characteristics of a small agricultural market town, some
sombre mansions, a dingy inn, and a petty bourse, Marney
mainly consisted of a variety of narrow and crowded lanes
formed by cottages built of rubble, or unhewn stones without
cement, and from age, or badness of the material, looking as
if they could scarcely hold together. The gaping chinks
admitted every blast; the leaning chimneys had lost half their
original height; the rotten rafters were evidently misplaced;
while in many instances the thatch, yawning in some parts to
admit the wind and wet, and in all utterly unfit for its
original purpose of giving protection from the weather, looked
more like the top of a dunghill than a cottage. Before the
doors of these dwellings, and often surrounding them, ran open
drains full of animal and vegetable refuse, decomposing into
disease, or sometimes in their imperfect course filling foul
pits or spreading into stagnant pools, while a concentrated
solution of every species of dissolving filth was allowed to
soak through and thoroughly impregnate the walls and ground
adjoining.

These wretched tenements seldom consisted of more than two
rooms, in one of which the whole family, however numerous,
were obliged to sleep, without distinction of age, or sex, or
suffering. With the water streaming down the walls, the light