A suggestion of another kind has been advanced -that probably the protection of the vaccine matter is only of a temporary nature, and that it becomes exhausted in the course of time, and thus leaves the constitution open to an attack of smallpox. If this had been the case, then in the course of the last forty-five years all those persons vaccinated should have by this time successively had attacks of small-pox when exposed to infection. This, however, has by no means happened; so that the fact cannot be true as a general rule, though, as we shall afterwards state, it may hold in some respects as regards individuals at different periods of life; and thus the propriety of a second vaccination about the age when the individual is entering on the period of manhood has been frequently suggested.

slowly regained health and strength, while her fictitious obsequies were magnificently performed and honored throughout Muscovy, and nearly all the European courts assumed mourning for the departed princess. This wise and noble Countess of Konigsmark, renowned as the mother of the brave marshal of Saxony, perceived that, by not seconding the fortunate deceit of the Prince Alexis, and the nation in general, and by proclaiming her recovery, the unhappy Princess Carolina, already the sport of such cruel fate, would expose herself to perish sooner or later by a more certain blow. She therefore persuaded her wretched mistress, who had scarcely strength to undertake the journey, to seek refuge in Paris, under the escort of an old man, a German domestic. Having collected as much money and jewelTaking all these exceptions into account, there ry as she was able, the princess set out, with can be no doubt but that the practice of vaccina- her faithful servant, who remained with her in tion, with its partial drawbacks, has been an ines-the character of father, which he sustained during timable boon to mankind. It has been ascer- his life; and truly he possessed the feelings and tained that every fourteenth child born was cut off tenderness, as well as the semblance, of a parent. by small-pox; and that in most cases where adults The tumult and noise of Paris, however, renwere infected, a death occurred out of every seven. dered it a place of sojourn ill adapted to the mind If to this we add the other fatal diseases called of Carolina, and to her desire of concealment. into action by this malady, the influence on the in- Her small establishment having been increased by crease of population by the check it has received a single maid-servant, she accordingly embarked from vaccination must be held to be very consider- for Louisiana, where the French, who were then able. We accordingly find that, previous to 1780, in possession of this lovely portion of South the annual mortality in England and Wales was America, had formed extensive colonies. Scarcerated at one in forty; whereas at the present timely was the young and beautiful stranger arrived it is one in forty-six. No doubt other causes have combined to improve the general health, but that the preventive power of vaccination has been mainly instrumental, appears, even from the diminished deaths from small-pox, sufficiently evident. Indeed, we have only to call to mind the scarred and pitted faces, marred features, and opaque and sightless eyeballs of former days, to be convinced of the essential service which has been rendered to the community.

fidelity. Propriety forbade that Moldask and Car- Bourbon. He quickly informed the king of all,. olina should inhabit together the same dwelling after this event. He loved her truly, but loved her good fame more, and explained to her, not without grief, that it was necessary he should seek another abode, unless she, who had already renounced all thought of pride and rank, were content to assume a name dearer and more sacred still than that of friend. He gave her no reason to doubt that vanity, instead of love, was the origin of this proposal, since the princess herself was firm in her desire to remain happy in private life. With all delicacy he sought to assure her that he could not but remember, in case of a refusal, that it was scarcely undeserved. Nor could he ever forget how much was exacted from him, by the almost regal birth of her to whose hand he thus dared aspire.

From Chambers' Journal.

HISTORY OF THE FIREPLACE.

DURING the last few years, public attention has been laudably directed to the defective means which still exist for warming and ventilating houses. Although we have arrived at a high state of civilization in some respects, yet the method still in use for producing an artificial climate in modern habitations, is perhaps more primitive and defective than any of our domestic contrivances. We burn coal in a vessel or stove which is no whit better in principle than the ancient fire-basket. Whilst the chimney-wall in each room is often heated like an oven, those opposite and at the sides are but a few degrees above the temperature of the atmosphere. In this respect the ancients evinced much greater ingenuity than we do; and many of the so-called inventions of modern date were, it appears, in general use hundreds and thousands of years ago. By the research of a recent author, many curious and interesting facts concerning warming and ventilation have been brought to light and as in this country all ideas of comfort and sociality are centred around the hearth, we doubt not that a historical sketch of the "fireplace," chiefly drawn from the above source, will prove interesting.

thus the discovery of fire gave rise to the first social meeting of mankind, to the formation of language, to their ultimate union, and to all the wonders of subsequent civilization."* The Chinese historians attribute the earliest power of producing fire at will, by the friction of two pieces of dried wood, to Souigine, one of their first kings. This power once known, the nomadic races in all countries ever availed themselves of it; though a fire made of dried wood or grass in the open air, or in a rude tent, was their sole provision against cold for many ages.

Increased intelligence induced mankind to seek for greater warmth under substantial cover, and the first houses they took to were ready built, being chiefly caves. In the middle of these they made fires, in spite of the smoke, for which there was no other outlet than the hole by which the inhabitants came in and out. The same rude method was continued even when men learnt to build houses, and to congregate in cities; only they made a hole in the roof to let the smoke out, exactly like the Laplanders and some of the Irish at the present day.

The parents of western civilization, the Egyptians, although they built themselves excellent houses, and were scrupulously nice in their domestic arrangements, either made their fires (for it is cold enough even in that warm climate to need them occasionally) on a central hearth, or used pans of live charcoal to carry about from one room to another. To them is ascribed the invention of bellows to concentrate the energy of fire. The reader will see in the second volume of Wil

The history of the fireside may be said to commence in the dark ages; for it reaches back to a time when man was unacquainted with the existence of fire. The early records of nearly all nations refer to a time when that element was unknown. Indeed, instances of such ignorance have been met with in comparatively modern times.kinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient When Magellan visited the Marian Islands in Egyptians, copies of that instrument taken from 1521, the natives believed themselves to be the paintings on tombs, at least three thousand years only people in the world. They were without old. During the exode and wanderings of the everything which we regard as necessaries, and in Jews, their fireplaces were precisely like those total ignorance of fire. Several of their huts being both of the primitive races and of the modern consumed, they at first considered the flame to be Arabs-small bonfires in conical tents, with a hole a kind of animal that attached itself to the wood, in the apex of the cone to let out the smoke; but and fed upon it. Some who approached too near, after their establishment in Canaan, their houses, being scorched, communicated their terror to the it has been inferred, resembled those of the Egyprest, who durst only look upon it at a distance. tians, "wide, thorough aired with windows, and They were afraid, they said, that the terrible ani- large chambers ceiled with cedar, and painted with mal would bite them, or wound them with its vio- vermilion ;" and, judging from the terms they lent breathing. They speedily learned to use fire had to mark the position, size, and manner of with as much address as Europeans. Few his- closing the apertures, they must have paid great torical facts, therefore, are less doubtful than that attention to domestic accominodation. The winter man was once without means of artificial heat. A in Palestine being cold and long, and wood abunPhoenician tradition attributed its discovery to a dant, particular apartments were appropriated to hunter observing a conflagration that had been ex- the season when fires were wanted, to avoid the cited in a forest by the attrition of some trees nuisance of smoke pervading the house, and soilduring a storm. Another tradition varies the ing its furniture and ornaments. About the latter account; in the winter season, Vulcan the king, end of November, King Jehoiakim was sitting in coming to a tree on the mountains that had been his "winter house," when he threw the roll of fired by a thunderbolt, was cheered by its heat; Baruch "into the fire that was burning on the and adding more wood to preserve it, he invited hearth before him." The prophet Amos alluded his companions to share in his pleasure, and there- to the same custom, when he declared that the upon claimed to be the inventor of flame. Fire" winter house, with the summer house," would once discovered, the primeval savages, though at first alarmed, gradually felt its blessed influence; and it is thus that tradition gives us an account of the earliest fireside; for around the embers of the burning trees men first learned to herd; and as the intercourse continued under the bond of the common enjoyment, the incoherent sounds by which they expressed their emotions were by degrees roughly cast into the elements of speech;

*On the History and Art of Warming and Ventilating Rooms and Buildings, &c. By Walter Bernan, Civil Engineer. 2 vols. Bell: London.

be destroyed. From the hearths and braziers in these brumal apartments, the smoke was emitted at a hole in the roof, or by the arubbah; for, notwithstanding what some rabbis have written about the Jews being so scrupulous to preserve the purity of the Holy City, that they would not permit the erection of a chimney in Jerusalem, they were, perhaps, as ignorant as the Egyptians of that contrivance. The great improvement that

* Vitruvius, b. ii., c. 1.

† Jerem. xxii. 14.

chimneys would have made on Mount Sion itself, | the smoke of the house, but also by that from the is graphically described by Baruch, when he neighboring buildings." The principal fireplace notices"the faces that were blacked by the smoke in a Roman house of the best kind was built in that cometh out of the temple."

The method of using fuel among the Greeks was the same as among the Hebrews, but perhaps without their care for ventilation. Homer describes his princes undressing themselves in the palace, to kill with their own hands the sheep, oxen, and swine they were to eat at dinner; roasting the entrails, and during the entertainment handing them to each other as delicacies. The repast being finished, he shows them sitting for their pleasure on the piled skins of the animals they had slain and devoured, and playing at games of chance, and one of them taking a pastern bone out of a basket in which it was lying, and throwing it at the head of a beggar, but on missing its aim, making a grease spot where it fell on the opposite wall. From this picture of the grossness of ancient manners, it may be concluded that when the poet says, Penelope's maids threw the glowing embers out of the braziers upon the floor, and heaped fresh wood upon them, he did not mean to depict his immortal barbarians burning odoriferous fuel on purpose to sweeten what must have been a vitiated atmosphere. The fire that was quickly to blaze on the hearth, had to diffuse the comforts of light as well as warmth; and the fragrant logs were known to abound with the resinous material of illumination. In the heroic age, they had oil and tallow in abundance, but were ignorant of the method of burning them in lamps; and the only use they appear to have made of wax, was to put it in the ear to shut out sound. Burning fuel was carried into the apartment where light was required, and sometimes placed on altars for the same purpose; and long thin pieces of lighted wood were carried in the hand when they moved from one place to another in the night.

the bath, chiefly to heat the caldarium or sweatingroom of a bath. It was a sort of furnace, and called a hypocaust, and served also to heat the walls of the whole habitation; quite upon the principle of the hot-air system which has recently been introduced as a modern invention. "The hypocaust being constructed in the under story of a building in the manner described by Vitruvius, several pipes of baked clay were then built into the walls, having their lower ends left open to the hypocaust. These pipes were carried to the height of the first or second story, and had their upper orifices made to open into the chamber that was to be heated. They were closed by movable covers. While green wood was burning in the furnace, and the hypocaust filled with its acrid smoke, the covers were not removed from the caliducts; but as soon as the wood was charred, the upper orifices of the pipes were opened, and the hot vapor from the hypocaust then flowed into the chamber." It is singular, that although these hot-air ducts would have answered to carry off smoke, the Romans never hit upon the expedient of applying them to that purpose.

The excavations of Pompeii have revealed to us the family hearths of the Romans, such as were used in rooms not sufficiently heated by the hypocaust. The general method of procuring a warm in-door climate, was by burning charcoal in a brazier on the pavement in the middle of the room, and allowing the vapor to exude at the door and window. These braziers and tripods, formed of all sizes, in iron and bronze, occasionally displayed great elegance of design and neatness of workmanship, and sometimes were contrived to heat water. One of this description, in the museum at Naples, is twenty-eight inches square, and has four towers, one at each angle, fitted with Coal, it has been thought, was known to the a lid that can be raised by a ring. The fireGreek naturalists. Theophrastus speaks of fossil hearth is placed in the square part in the middle, substances found in Liguria, and in Elis, in the which is lined with iron, as in the common braway to Olympia, and used by smiths, that when ziers. The fluid to be heated was contained in broken for use are earthy, and that kindled and the towers. Another use of these cup-like towers burned like wood-coal. The general fuel was reminds us once more that there is nothing new green wood; and where that was unattainable, under the sun. When Dr. Arnott's stove was other vegetable and even excrementitious sub- introduced, it was found to have an injuriously stances were used on the hearth for combustibles. drying effect upon the air, consequently a vase of On days of ceremony, it was also customary to water was added, to supply the necessary huburn fragrant substances. When Alexander the midity by evaporation. Now, what says Mr. Great was at an entertainment, given in the winter Bernan on the use of these foculari? "The cold by one of his friends, "a brazier was brought into dry air of an Italian winter and spring was desicthe apartment to warm it. The day being cold, cated to a high degree after being expanded by and the king observing the small quantity of fuel the heat of a hypocaust, or a fire of charcoal; that had been provided, jeeringly desired his host,' " and these braziers appear a very elegant method says Plutarch, "to bring more wood or incense." of diffusing that quantity of moisture in the air of The supply of the precious firing appeared to the an apartment that was necessary to make it agreeking too scanty for producing the required warmth; able and salubrious. Perhaps the evaporation was and if it arose from his host being niggardly of partially regulated by shutting or opening the lids the costly fuel, he hinted that some even of the of the water vessels." common sort would be acceptable.

The Romans made vast strides of improvement in fireplaces, although they were quite unable to rid themselves of the smoke nuisance. Vitruvius, in his work on architecture, directs that the walls of rooms "in which fires or many lights are burned, should be finished above the podium with polished panels of a black color, having red or yellow margins round them; and he advises that delicate ornaments should not be introduced into the cornices, because they are spoiled, not only by

When the Romans landed in Britain, they found our savage forefathers living either in detached wigwams of wicker-work, in huts of loose stones without chimney or window, or in excavated caves, like the Germans, surrounded by their winter provisions, and stifled with smoke. The following fireside picture is drawn from the Welsh historian Gyraldus:-" Families inhabit a large hut or house, which, having a fire in the midst, serves to warm them by day and to sleep round by night; and he describes the bands of young men who fol

Cottages had neither louver nor loupe, and their inmates lay round the fire. Longlande describes one of a vagrant group :

"Suten at even by the hote coles,

Unlouk his legges abrod other lygge at hus ese,
Rest hym and roste hym and his ryg turn,
Drynke drue and deepe, and draw hym than to

bedde."

In lodging-houses, the same packing system was followed, and when a person had a bed to himself, it was a mark of distinction, and recorded accordingly. In the magnificent strongholds, built near the time of the conquest, a central hearth is seldom found. Having several stories in height, and their roofs being used as a terrace for defence, an exit in the common form for the smoke, even from the uppermost chambers, would have been impracticable. A huge recess, therefore, was built at one side of the hall, and on its hearth fuel was burnt, the smoke finding egress by a contrivance which may be regarded as a chimney in its infancy. Over the hearth was a sort of huge funnel, or hole in the wall, which sloped up through its thickness, till it reached daylight in the outer side of the wall.

lowed no profession but arms, visiting families to whom they were always welcome, and passing the day with the most animated cheerfulness. At length, sunk into repose ou a thin covering of dried reeds, spread round the great fire placed in the middle, they lay down promiscuously, covered only by a coarse-made cloth called brychan, and kept one another warm by lying close together; and when one side lost its genial heat, they turned about, and gave the chilly side to the fire. The great men endeavored to improve on this custom during the day. A Welsh prince had an officer in his court called a foot-bearer, whose duty it was, at meal-times, when his master was seated at table, to sit with his back to the fire, and keep the princely feet warm and comfortable by cherishing them in his bosom." In the later feudal times, the spacious lofty hall, left open to the roof, had its windows placed high from the floor, and filled with oiled linen or louver boards, or occasionally with painted glass. The floor of stone or earth had a part at one end raised a little above the general level, and laid with planks. On this platform or dais stood a massive table, and ponderous benches or forms, and a high-backed seat for the master under a canopy. On the hearth, in the middle of the hall, were placed the andirons for Wood, turf, and furze were almost the only supporting the ends of the brands, that were ar- fuel. The first legal mention of coal was made in ranged by means of a heavy two-pronged fork, 1239, when Henry III. granted a charter to the the type and predecessor of the modern poker. inhabitants of Newcastle to dig for it; but so great On the roof over the hearth was a turret or louver, was the prejudice against it, from an erroneous filled with boards arranged so as to exclude rain notion that it was injurious to the health, that it and wind, and permit the escape of smoke; and was not in general use till the seventeenth century. this was sometimes an object of considerable Meanwhile, the funnel-like smoke-duct of the architectural beauty in the external aspect of the feudal castle became gradually improved into a building. In this gaunt and aguish apartment, chimney. Leland says in his Itinerary, speaking heated by a single fire, the company were in of Bolton Castle, "One thynge I muche notyd in a position not much different from what they the hawle of Bolton, how chimeneys were conwould be in the open air: not a particle of heated veyed by tunnells made on the syds of the walls air could add to their comfort, for as fast as pro- betwyxt the lights in the hawle, and by this duced, it escaped through the louver: light was means, and by no covers, is the smoke of the the only solace the greater number could derive harthe in the hawle wonder strangely conveyed."* from the blazing fuel; and the few who were in a situation to feel the radiant heat, were incommoded by the current of cold air sweeping like a hurricane along the floor towards the fire. From the height of the louver, and low temperature of the smoke, few of the buoyant flakes of charcoal found their way into the atmosphere; and the larger the bonfire the thicker was the layer of soot deposited on each individual. Boisterous weather also brought its annoyance. Had the fire been made in an open field, they might have moved to the windward of the smoke, but in the hall, where could they flee to from its miseries? The country houses of inferior landholders and farmers were generally one story high. If they were built with two stories, the roof was so deep as to reach to the ceiling of the lower room. The hall and kitchen forming one apartment, and roughly plastered, was open to the timbers of the roof, and sometimes had a louver, and a window that could

be closed with a shutter:

Chimneys were afterwards generally adopted. To old buildings they were added, whilst new ones were never constructed without what a wordy author calls "the elegant and commodious tube now known by the name of a chimney." By its help the fireside was greatly improved.

The following description applies to the firesides of the end of Henry VIII.'s reign, by which time chimneys or flues had become universal:-"The windows had curtains, and were glazed in the manner described by Erasmus; but in inferior dwellings, such as those of copyholders and the like, the light-holes were filled with linen, or with a shutter. The hearth-recess was generally wide, high, and deep, and had a large flue. The hearth, usually raised a few inches above the floor, had sometimes a halpas or dais made before it, as in the king's and queen's chambers in the Tower. Before the hearth-recess, or on the halpas, when there was one, a piece of green cloth or tapestry was spread, as a substitute for the rushes that covered the lower part of the floor. On this were placed a very high-backed chair or