[791] I reckon the post among police regulations, to which its object
originally belonged, as well as that of the coining of money; though in
the course of time it has been made a productive source of revenue, by
which it has been rendered burdensome to the public, while its utility
has been lessened.
[792] Origin. lib. xv. cap. 16.
[793] Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 1071. Diodor. Sic. lib. ii. cap. 13. Polyæni
Stratagem. lib. viii. cap. 26.
[794] Valerius Max. lib. iii. cap. 7. Plutarch. Reipublicæ Gerendæ
Præcepta, p. 811.
[795] 1 Kings, chap. vii. ver. 12.
[796] Antiquit. lib. xx. cap. 9.
[797] Pesachim, fol. 71. Metzia, fol. 26.
[798] Bergier, Hist. des Grands Chemins Rom. liv. i. chap. viii.
[799] Statius, Sylv. ii. 2, v. 12.
[800] Lib. xli. cap. 27.
[801] Lib. xxix. cap. 37.
[802] Lib. x. cap. 23. Equally inapplicable are the passages lib.
xxxviii. cap. 28, and lib. x. cap. 47.
[803] Æl. Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 24.
[804] Ovid. Fastor. lib. v. ver. 293. See also Marc. Varro, lib. iv. de
L. L. Festus, p. 310. An examination of the question whether the ædiles
or censors had the inspection of the streets may be found in Ducker’s
notes on Liv. lib. x. cap. 32 (edit. Drakenborchii).
[805] Cardonne Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne sous les Arabes, 3
vols. 12mo, Par. 1765. Translated into German, with notes, by Dr. Murr.
Nurnb. 1768, i. p. 187.
[806] Rod. Ximenez, archiep. Toletani, Historia Arabum, cap. xxvi. p.
23. Printed at the end of Erpenius’ Historia Saracenica, 4to. Lugd.
1625.
[807] Rigordus De Gestis Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne Hist. Script.
Franc. Par. 1649, fol. p. 16.
[808] Gulielmi Armorici Hist. de Vita Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne, p.
73. Alberici Monachi Trium Fontium Chronicon, ed. a G. G. Leibnitio,
Lips. 1698, 4to, p. 367.
[809] Felibien, Hist. de Paris, i. p. 104.
[810] A proof of this may be seen in De la Mare, iv. p. 197, who gives
the best account respecting the regulations made to keep in repair the
pavement of the streets of Paris. The later regulations are given by
Perrot in Dictionnaire de Voierie, Paris, 1782, 4to, p. 315.
[811] Courtepée Description du Duché de Bourgogne, i. p. 233, and ii.
p. 62.
[812] Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, vol. i. p. 483.
[813] In the king’s order it was said, that the highway named Holbourn
in London was so deep and miry, that many perils and hazards were
thereby occasioned as well to the king’s carriages passing that way as
to those of his subjects; he therefore ordained two vessels, each of
twenty tons burthen, to be employed at his expense, for bringing stones
for paving and mending the same.--Anderson’s Hist. of Com. i. p. 244.
[814] In this order the streets were described “as very foul, and
full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and (noyous) noisome, as
well for the king’s subjects on horseback as on foot, and with
carriage.”--Anderson, _ut supra_, p. 370.
[815] Anderson, i. p. 491. Northouck’s History of London, 1773, 4to, p.
121. 217. 414. 436.
[816] Digest. lib. xliii. tit. 2.
[817] Notitia utraque dignitatum, Pancirolli. Lugd. 1608.--Notit.
Imperii Occident. cap. 19. This work may be found in Grævii Thes.
Antiq. Rom. vol. vii.
[818] Digestorum lib. xliii. tit. 12, and lib. ix. tit. 3.
[819] Martial, Epig. vii. 61. Juvenal, sat. iii. ver. 247.
[820] A full history of the regulations made respecting the cleaning of
the streets of Paris may be found in De la Mare, iv. p. 200.
[821] De la Mare, iv. p. 202.
[822] Ibid. iv. p. 172, 203.
[823] De la Mare, p. 205.
[824] Ibid. iv. p. 216, 239, 243.
[825] This contract is inserted in Perrot, Dictionnaire de Voierie, p.
305. In 1445 six carts were employed at Dijon in cleaning the streets.
[826] Histoire de la Ville de Paris, par Sauval, vol. ii. p. 640.
[827] De la Mare, iv. p. 253. Perrot, p. 307.
[828] Letters from Scotland, 1760, 2 vols. 8vo. [At this period,
when the luxury of water-closets was unknown, it was a custom for
men to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh, carrying conveniences
(pails) suspended from a yoke on their shoulders, enveloped by cloaks
sufficiently large to cover both their apparatus and customers, crying,
“Wha wants me, for a bawbee?” It has since been used against the
Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom. By way of
a set-off, however, it may be observed that at the present day there is
a water-closet in almost every house in Edinburgh.]
[829] Cook’s First Voyage, 4to, vol. ii. p. 281.
[830] Whoever wishes to enter deeper into the history of this family
convenience, certainly an object of police, the improvement of which
the Academy of Sciences at Paris did not think below its notice, may
consult the following work, Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, Inscriptions,
Belles Lettres, Beaux Arts, etc. nouvellement établie à Troyes en
Champagne. A Troyes et Paris 1756. The author, who by this piece of
ridicule wished, perhaps, to avenge himself of some academy which
did not admit him as a member, has collected from the Greek and
Latin writers abundance of dirty passages respecting this question:
“Si l’usage de chier en plein air étoit universel chez les anciens
peuples.” He proves from a passage of Aristophanes, Ecclesiaz. ver.
1050, that the Greeks had privies in their houses.
[831] De la Mare, i. p. 568, and iv. p. 254. “Tous propriétaires de
maisons de la ville et fauxbourgs de Paris sont tenus avoir latrines
et _privez_ suffisans en leurs maisons.” [They should also have been
compelled to make use of them.]
[832] De la Mare, _ut supra_.--Coûtume de Mante, art. 107.--Etampes,
art. 87.--Nivernois, chap. x. art. 15.--Bourbonnois, art. 515.--Calais,
art. 179.--Tournay, tit. 17, art. 5.--Melun, art. 209.
[833] Historische Beyträge die Preussischen und benachbarten Staaten
betreffend. Berlin, 1784, 4to, iii. p. 373.
[834] Nicholai Beschreibung von Berlin, p. 26. The author quotes, from
the order published at Berlin, Nov. 30, 1641, respecting the buildings
of the city, section fourth, the following words: “Many citizens have
presumed to erect hog-sties in the open streets, and often under the
windows of bed-chambers, which the council cannot by any means suffer;”
and in the seventeenth section hog-sties are forbidden to be erected in
future in the small streets near the milk-market.
[835] “Frivola hæc fortassis cuipiam et nimis levia esse videantur, sed
curiositas nihil recusat.”--Vopiscus in Vita Aureliani, cap. 10.
[836] Chronica der Stadt Frankf. von C. A. von Lersner, i. p. 512.
[837] [Berlin, strange to say, is very ill circumstanced in respect
to these conveniences, even at the present day (1846). In most of the
houses, small closets are located on the landings of the stairs, which
require to be emptied every other night, to the no great satisfaction
of the olfactory nerves. Nor are the streets kept in a very proper
state,--large puddles of filth being allowed to collect before the
doors even of the best houses, and which, especially in the hot
months of summer, diffuse a most horrible stench. Something however
must be allowed for the low situation of the town, which renders
drainage next to impracticable. Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller,
speaking of Berlin as he found it in 1841, says, “It is a fine city,
very like the age she represents--very fine and very nasty.... The
streets are spacious and straight, with broad margins on each side for
foot-passengers; and a band of plain flagstones on these margins make
them much more walkable than the streets of most continental towns.
But these margins are divided from the spacious carriage-way in the
middle by open kennels, telling the nose unutterable things. These
open kennels are boarded over only at the gateways of the palaces,
to let the carriages cross them, and must be particularly convenient
to the inhabitants, for they are not at all particularly agreeable.
Use reconciles people to nuisances which might be easily removed. A
sluggish but considerable river, the Spree, stagnates through the town,
and the money laid out in stucco work and outside decoration of the
houses, would go far towards covering over their drains, raising the
water by engines and sending it in a purifying stream through every
street and sewer. If bronze and marble could smell, Blücher and Bülow,
Schwerin and Ziethen, and duck-winged angels, and two-headed eagles
innumerable, would be found on their pedestals holding their noses
instead of grasping their swords. It is a curious illustration of the
difference between the civilization of the fine arts and that of the
useful arts, in their influences on social well-being, that Berlin as
yet has not advanced so far in the enjoyments and comforts of life,
in the civilization of the useful arts, as to have water conveyed
in pipes into its city and into its houses. Three hundred thousand
people have taste enough to be in die-away ecstasies at the singing of
Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Taglioni, and have not taste enough to
appreciate or feel the want of a supply of water in their kitchens,
sculleries, drains, sewers, and water-closets. The civilization of an
English village is, after all, more real civilization than that of
Paris or Berlin.”]