from their infancy accustomed to them. At the same time nothing is more easy than to keep them clean; for, when by any accident they happen to be fouled, a lie made of ashes and water, with a brush, will scour them perfectly; as will also a little strong soft soap and

water.

That hot iron of itself gives no offensive smell, those know very well who have (as the writer of this has) been present at a furnace when the workmen were pouring out the flowing metal to cast large plates, and not the least smell of it to be perceived. That hot iron does not, like lead, brass, and some other metals, give out unwholesome vapors, is plain from the general health and strength of those who constantly work in iron, as furnace-men, forge-men, and smiths; that it is in its nature a metal perfectly wholesome to the body of man, is known from the beneficial use of chalybeate or iron-mine waters; from the good done by taking steel filings in several disorders; and that even the smithy water, in which hot irons are quenched, is found advantageous to the human constitution. The ingenious and learned Dr. Desaguliers, to whose instructive writings the contriver of this machine acknowledges himself much indebted, relates an experiment he made, to try whether heated iron would yield unwholesome vapors. He took a cube of iron, and, having given it a very great heat, he fixed it so to a receiver, exhausted by the air-pump, that all the air, rushing in to fill the receiver, should first pass through a hole in the hot iron. He then put a small bird into the receiver, who breathed that air without any inconvenience, or suffering the least disorder. But the same experiment being made with a cube of hot brass, a bird put into that air died in a few minutes. Brass, indeed, stinks even when cold, and much more when hot; lead, too,

when hot, yields a very unwholesome steam; but iron is always sweet, and every way taken is wholesome and friendly to the human body, except in weapons.

That warmed rooms make people tender and apt to catch cold, is a mistake as great as it is (among the English) general. We have seen in the preceding pages how the common rooms are apt to give colds; but the writer of this paper may affirm from his own experience, and that of his family and friends, who have used warm rooms for these four winters past, that by the use of such rooms, people are rendered less liable to take cold, and, indeed, actually hardened. If sitting warm in a room made one subject to take cold on going out, lying warm in bed should, by a parity of reason, produce the same effect when we rise. Yet we find we can leap out of the warmest bed naked, in the coldest morning, without any such danger; and in the same manner out of warm clothes into a cold bed. The reason is, that in these cases the pores all close at once, the cold is shut out, and the heat within augmented, as we soon after feel by the glowing of the flesh and skin. Thus, no one was ever known to catch cold by the use of the cold bath; and are not cold baths allowed to harden the bodies of those that use them? Are they not therefore frequently prescribed to the tenderest constitutions? Now, every time you go out of a warm room into the cold, freezing air, you do as it were plunge into a cold bath, and the effect is in proportion the same; for (though perhaps you may feel somewhat chilly at first) you find in a little time your bodies hardened and strengthened, your blood is driven round with a brisker circulation, and a comfortable, steady, uniform inward warmth succeeds that equal outward warmth you first received in the room. Farther to confirm this assertion, we instance the Swedes, the

*

Danes, and the Russians; these nations are said to live in rooms, compared to ours, as hot as ovens ; yet where are the hardy soldiers, though bred in their boasted cool houses, that can, like these people, bear the fatigues of a winter campaign in so severe a climate, march whole days to the neck in snow, and at night intrench in ice, as they do?

The mentioning of those northern nations puts me in mind of a considerable public advantage that may arise from the general use of these fire-places. It is observable, that, though those countries have been well inhabited for many ages, wood is still their fuel, and yet at no very great price; which could not have been, if they had not universally used stoves, but consumed it as we do in great quantities, by open fires. By the help of this saving invention our wood may grow as fast as we consume it, and our posterity may warm themselves at a moderate rate, without being obliged to fetch their fuel over the Atlantic; as, if pit-coal should not be here discovered (which is an uncertainty) they must necessarily do.

We leave it to the political arithmetician to compute how much money will be saved to a country, by its spending two thirds less of fuel; how much labor saved

* Mr. Boyle, in his experiments and observations upon cold, Show's Abridgment, Vol. I. p. 684, says, "It is remarkable, that, while the cold has strange and tragical effects at Moscow and elsewhere, the Russians and Livonians should be exempt from them, who accustom theinselves to pass immediately from a great degree of heat, to as great a one of cold, without receiving any visible prejudice thereby. I remember being told by a person of unquestionable credit, that it was a common practice among them, to go from a hot stove into cold water; the same was also affirmed to me by another who resided at Moscow. This tradition is likewise abundantly confirmed by Olearius." "It is a surprising thing," says he, "to see how far the Russians can endure heat; and how, when it makes them ready to faint, they can go out of their stoves, stark naked, both men and women, and throw themselves into cold water, and even in winter wallow in the snow."

in cutting and carriage of it; how much more land may be cleared by cultivation; how great the profit by the additional quantity of work done, in those trades particularly that do not exercise the body so much, but that the workfolks are obliged to run frequently to the fire to warm themselves; and to physicians to say, how much healthier thick-built towns and cities will be, now half suffocated with sulphury smoke, when so much less of that smoke shall be made, and the air breathed by the inhabitants be consequently so much purer. These things it will suffice just to have mentioned; let us proceed to give some necessary directions to the workman, who is to fix or set up these fire-places.

Directions to the Bricklayer.

The chimney being first well swept and cleansed from soot, &c., lay the bottom plate down on the hearth, in the place where the fire-place is to stand, which may be as forward as the hearth will allow. Chalk a line from one of its back corners round the plate to the other corner, that you may afterwards know its place when you come to fix it; and from those corners, two parallel lines to the back of the chimney; make marks also on each side, that you may know where the partition is to stand, which is to prevent any communication between the air and smoke. Then, removing the plate, make a hollow under it and beyond it, by taking up as many of the bricks or tiles as you can, within your chalked lines, quite to the chimney-back. Dig out six or eight inches deep of the earth or rubbish, all the breadth and length of your hollow; then make a passage of four inches square (if the place will allow so much) leading from the hollow to some place commu. cating with the outer air; by outer air we mean air

without the room you intend to warm. This passage may be made to enter your hollow on either side, or in the fore part, just as you find most convenient, the circumstances of your chimney considered. If the fireplace is to be put up in a chamber, you may have this communication of outer air from the staircase; or sometimes more easily from between the chamber floor and the ceiling of the lower room, making only a small hole in the wall of the house entering the space betwixt those two joists with which your air-passage in the hearth communicates. If this air-passage be so situated as that mice may enter it, and nestle in the hollow, a little grate of wire will keep them out. This passage being made, and, if it runs under any part of the hearth, tiled over securely, you may proceed to raise your false back. This may be of four inches or two inches thickness, as you have room; but let it stand at least four inches from the true chimney back. In narrow chimneys this false back runs from jamb to jamb; but in large, old-fashioned chimneys, you need not make it wider than the back of the fire-place. To begin it, you may form an arch nearly flat, of three bricks end to end, over the hollow, to leave a passage the breadth of the iron fire-place, and five or six inches deep, rounding at bottom, for the smoke to turn and pass under the false back, and so behind it up the chimney. The false back is to rise till it is as high as the breast of the chimney, and then to close over to the breast;* always observing, if there is a wooden mantel-tree, to close above it. If there is no wood in the breast, you may arch over and close even with the lower part of the breast. By this closing the chimney is made tight,

See page 49, where the trap-door is described, that ought to be in this closing.