mmon to both quarters, and in the district now under discussion, another feature most injurious to the cleanliness of the inhabitants, is the multitude of pigs walking about in all p. 53the alleys, rooting into the offal heaps, or kept imprisoned in small pens.  Here, as in most of the working-men’s quarters of Manchester, the pork-raisers rent the courts and build pig-pens in them.  In almost every court one or even several such pens may be found, into which the inhabitants of the court throw all refuse and offal, whence the swine grow fat; and the atmosphere, confined on all four sides, is utterly corrupted by putrefying animal and vegetable substances.  Through this quarter, a broad and measurably decent street has been cut, Millers Street, and the background has been pretty successfully concealed.  But if any one should be led by curiosity to pass through one of the numerous passages which lead into the courts, he will find this piggery repeated at every twenty paces.

Such is the Old Town of Manchester, and on re-reading my description, I am forced to admit that instead of being exaggerated, it is far from black enough to convey a true impression of the filth, ruin, and uninhabitableness, the defiance of all considerations of cleanliness, ventilation, and health which characterise the construction of this single district, containing at least twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants.  And such a district exists in the heart of the second city of England, the first manufacturing city of the world.  If any one wishes to see in how little space a human being can move, how little air—and such air!—he can breathe, how little of civilisation he may share and yet live, it is only necessary to travel hither.  True, this is the Old Town, and the people of Manchester emphasise the fact whenever any one mentions to them the frightful condit