William Ewart Gladstone and His Contemporaries (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1883 Excerpt: ...was erected in London in the wall of St. Sepulchre's Churchyard at the corner of Snow Hill. This fountain, as well as others in the Royal Exchange, in Regent Circus, and elsewhere, was the gift of Mr. Gurney of Lombard Street, and was very ornamental in design. It was time for some such provision to be made, and it should have received greater attention than has since been given to it, for some of the old springs and wells disappeared with the deeper drainage of the metropolis, and those that remained and were drawn from the few surviving pumps were mostly in the vicinity of churchyards or other places, where they had become polluted, so that the sanitary authorities found it necessary to chain up the pump-handles. But the drainage of London still went into the Thames, though, as we have mentioned, the new system of an outfall further out towards sea, from which the sewage of nearly the whole metropolitan area would be discharged, was being carried out by the Metropolitan Board of Works. Though the Thames Embankment was being constructed, the river itself was little better than an open drain, and during the sultry weather the stench which it emitted penetrated to the Houses of Parliament and gave legislators a practical example of the evils under which people dwelling on the banks of the stream had long been suffering. In recording the progress of public works we cannot properly pass over the completion of the new Houses of Parliament, which was really only effected just before the session of 1859, though the House of Peers had been opened in 1847 and the Commons had first met for business in their new chamber in 1852. The coloured glass windows were added in 1859, the old St. Stephen's Crypt, or St. Mary's Chapel in the vaults, was reuewed, the wall fresco...