of the country, is to be found in the impure water, with which the former are so generally supplied, and we may confidently predict, that in consequence mainly of the introduction of the Croton River into the City of New-York, no city in the world of equal size, will surpass it in salubrity. To the operation of the same cause, we may doubtless look with confidence for a decided improvement in personal comeliness and beauty. " It is evident," says Dr Jackson, " that the health of a whole community may be so affected by impurities in water drank by them, as to give a peculiar morbid ex- pression to their countenances which causes the observant eye of a traveller to remark it, while he in vain endeavours to account for the phenomenon. Who has not remarked the expression common in some of our cities, as in New-York and Boston, which is called a "care worn and anxious expression." This expression I will venture to assert, is not so much the result of " too much care," as it is of abdominal disease, produced by the habitual and continued use of impure and un- wholesome water, which has fixed upon us this morbid stamp. I do not know that the people of the cities in question, are subject to more care than those in other districts, but I do know that they use every day, in many forms, a variety of nox- ous ingredients, which they pump up from their wells, dissolved in the water, and 38 150 which enters into every form of food and drink they use in their houses." Mrs. Hale, also, in her excellent Manual " The Good Housekeeper," remarks, that " hard water always leaves a mineral matter on the skin, when we use it in washing, which renders the hands and face rough and liable to chap. Does not this water, if we drink it, likewise corrode and injure the fine membranes of the stomach ? The Boston people, who constantly use hard water for all purposes of cookery and drink, certainly have bad complexions, sallow, dry, and hard looking ; and com- plaints of the stomach or dyspepsia are very common among them.* A Salem gentleman declared, that when his daughters, who frequently visited at Boston, passed two or three weeks at a time there, he could see a very material change in their complexions. At Salem there is plenty of soft water, and the ladies of that ancient town are famed for their beauty, which is chiefly owing (its superiority I mean) to a peculiarly fair, delicate tincture of skin contrasted with the half petri- fied appearence of those who are obliged to drink hard water always, and often to wash in it." Such authority on this point we presume will not be disputed. Health, however, is no less promoted by the internal, than by the external use of water ; and it is to be hoped, that but a short period will elapse, before free baths will be provided at the public expense, for the use of the poor, as well as the public generally. Daily ablution should be regarded as necessary as daily food or sleep. The advantages which soft water possesses over hard, in the thousand economical purposes of life, are too obvious to need particular remark. The lime contained in well water, renders it inapplicable to the purposes of brewing, tanning, washing, bleaching, and many other processes in the arts and domestic economy ; and we believe the calculation would not be found extravagant, if we should say that by the use of the Croton water 100,000 dollars annually will be saved to the inhabitants of New- York, in the articles of soap and soda alone. When to this, we add the in- creased comfort and health of the citizens, from its free external and internal use, — the superior cleanliness of the streets, by the washing away of all stagnant matters in the sinks and gutters, and the consequent purity of the atmosphere, — the diminu- tion of danger from fires, and the consequent reduction of rates of insurance, with other important advantages too numerous to detail, we shall not consider its intro- duction purchased at too dear a rate, even were the expenses attending it increased to double the actual amount. We need not attempt to specify in detail the benefits which are likely to accrue to the city of New-York from the introduction of an abundance of pure water. Its * " It has been computed that the Boston people have drank sufficient lime, were it all collected, to build the Bunker Hill Monument as high as it was ever designed to be carried." 151 value is not to be estimated by dollars and cents