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But these benefactions, great and munificent as they seem to be, were not the most important services he performed for the city of Rome. The common-sewers were first made by order of Tarquinius Priscus, not so much with a view to cleanliness, as by way of subterranean drains to the Velabrum, and in order to carry off the stagnant water, which remained in the lower parts, after heavy rains.
The most impudent of the wretches brought before him, Fielding tells us, were always "such as have been before acquainted with the Discipline of Bridewell." These prisons, from which the disorderly and idle came out, "much more idle and disorderly than they went in," were, says Fielding, no other than "Schools of Vice, Seminaries of Idleness, and Common-sewers of Nastiness and Disease."
His catholic majesty, having determined to free his capital from so gross a nuisance, ordered, by proclamation, that the proprietor of every house should build a privy, and that sinks, drains, and common-sewers should he made at the public expence.
The principal part of the ducal mansion still remained uninjured; but the demesne in which it stood bore a strange analogy to the irregular mind of its noble owner. Here stood a beautiful group of exotic trees and shrubs, the remnant of the garden, amid yawning common-sewers, and heaps of rubbish.
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