them, place them in contrast, and the result will be the most extraordinary spectacle which the ingenuity of modern times has devised. Ireland in some, Scotland in some, and there will doubtless be seen the gigantic improvements of our vigorous national industry, our machines, and the great and grand engines of peace and war. France will probably outrun us in many of the materials of luxury and refinement— such as ornaments, whether of buildings, for the person, or for furniture, or those numberless trifles which are replete with beauty, but can be turned to little practical use. None can compete with the shawl-workers of India for the exquisite fineness of their fabrics; but they occupy months and even years with a manufacture, which an English engine will finish in a few days; their production is an article of the most delicate texture and of industry, we excel the Chinese, yet they excel us in some, and, glancing at the various nations of the world, we shall find this to be the case with many, if not with all. country, will, by itself, be the standard of every other. None will be thrust out. From London to Lahore, from Lahore to Cashmere, from that pleasant valley to the frozen north, and thence, through all regions, tropical, I venture to say that no one country or climate will temperate, or frigid, the summonses will be issued-carry off an universal prize. England will excel in some, "Come and show what you can do. If you are inferior, you can profit by our superiority; and if you can excel us, we shall gratefully take a lesson from your better methods." In the explanation lately afforded, of the plan of the Exhibition, it was stated that the raw material and the manufactures will be shown together. The elephant tusks of Africa will lie side by side with all the productions of the turner's wheel, the ivory balls of China, and all the numberless particles into which that delicate material is wrought. Russian and Morocco leathers, beaver skins from Baffin's Bay, will be displayed, with shoes, hats, and bookbinding; the wool of Australia, Thibet and Sussex, with the wrought materials from the looms of all parts of the world. The broad-costly worth-ours is for use. In ten thousand branches cloths of Europe; the shawls of Cashmere; silk, in its soft infancy, with the rich productions of Persia, India, France and England. The rough furs from the frozen regions; with the luxurious manufactures of Russia and Great Britain. There will be the cotton of America and India, the corn of Poland, Russia, the United States, Asia, France, and our own country. The "Exhaustless East" will furnish its countless materials of luxury; the Indian Islands will send spices and gums, with all the productions of native industry,—cotton, arms, domestic utensils, musical instruments, and models of Indian craft. There will be the rudest instruments in use among natives, still in the darkness of ignorance and slavery, with the delicate and complicated machines, which the unshackled industry of these islands can produce. The savage, amid northern snows, may send his sledge, his shoes, his rough garments, his humble ornaments, his implements of peace and war; and, it will be seen how the industry of each tribe adapts itself to their particular wants and position in the human scale. From India we may expect manufactures delicate, gauzy, and refined, the reflections of the indolent, voluptuous Asiatic character. Their very costume is begemmed and decorated with all the contrivances of taste; whilst the aborigines of sterner climates, will produce rough, useful, cumbrous things-illustrative of their hardy, frugal temperament. From the middle countries, if we may so express them, we shall see elaborate productions, finished with care soler, and giving evidence of an industry guided by reflective minds. In the construction of steam engines, whether for printing, for weaving, for coining, or for the manufacture of machinery,-what tokens of deep study! Every spindle, every intricacy, every little bar, piston, hinge, wheel or spring, originated in invention-which is merely the result of inquiry-for a thing invented literally means a thing found. Compare the rude spindle of Dacca with the flax wheel of Belfast; the primitive instrument of the Cashmere shawl-workers with the power-looms of our own country; the Egyptian or Chinese paper machine with that which receives at one end a bundle of rags and throws out a broad sheet at the other. Look at the rein-deer sledge of Kamtchatka, and then at the magnificent carriage or the whirling steam train; the cumbrous, imperfect contrivance for printing still used in the land of tea, junks, and pagodas, with that vast machine which, with an intellectual breath, emits four immense printed sheets in every second. Take up the antiquated gun employed by the Chinamen of Borneo-a long iron pipe, with a hole for the matchwith the magnificent instruments of European warfare. Place the carved cocoa-nut shell, or the calabash, in the same compartment with the delicate porcelain, which seems to add flavour to the liquid it contains. In short, gather the productions of the industry of the four quarters of the earth, and their several divisions, classify The savages of the most uncivilized regions will send specimens of carving, executed with instruments, which to an Englishman would be useless-nor is this surprising. The savage, having no better, is compelled to use those implements which he has at his disposal. The civilized man, enjoying more advantages, relinquishes such things— which seem to him toys for the infancy of industry, and in time forgets the very manner of their use. A child will frequently spin a top, build a card-house, or perform numberless feats, which a man would be timid to undertake. Thus the Australian can hurl his waddie, the Yankee can snuff a candle with a rifle-ball, the Chinaman can carve ivory and compound sweetmeats, the South Sea Islander can construct a dwelling without a single nail; and every savage race possesses some rude art, which civilization only imitates in an inferior degree. But this argues no superior ingenuity in the savage; circumstances form the school in which all mankind are taught. We bridged the Thames long before we learnt the use of knives and forks. It will consequently be a most curious study to observe, when the great exhibition is opened, how the savage of the African wilds exercises an industry, which is sufficient for his wants, and how the denizen of an European city never rests in the career of discovery, continually observing new necessities, and contriving new things to answer them. I trust that the site of the exhibition will be chosen with judicious care. The open space indicated, in Hyde Park, would appear at once sufficiently large and conveniently situated. To huddle such a collection into a few confined rooms would only be an illustration of the truth, that in proportion to the greatness of our conceptions, is frequently the littleness of our practical execution of them. Let the place be roomy, well-lighted, and accessible. Let the specimens of industry be displayed to advantage, with impartiality and taste. They should be arranged in compartments, we might have the most exquisite fabric of linen at the bottom of a broad sloping shelf, above it the inferior specimens of the same country; next that of some other region, and so on, that no invidious selection may be made. If we do not fear to display the specimens of our industrial progress in contrast with those of other nations, we should not hesitate to allow others equal advantages with ourselves, by arranging the manufactures of France, or Spain, or India, with the same care and judgment, and attention to effect. Another result of the exhibition will be, that it will open a new field of invention. In India, especially, manufactures are carried on, of which the people of this country are wholly ignorant, and implements are constructed of which the use is unknown in Europe. Now, if we can make a machine to measure the fifty thousandth than the royalest sham," is our motto now; and thus it is, that literature of even the lightest description, is no longer directed to the pleasing of a few giddy and fashionable minds, but has become democratic, (for that is the meaning of the change), bears upon human interests, elucidates the workings of existing social arrangements, displays the hopes, fears, and sufferings, of the human heart; and, in short, reveals to us the tragic drama of human life, in which every human being is an actor. part of an inch; if from an English manufactory more than fifty millions of miles of yarn a-year can be produced, we can surely turn in the undeveloped inventions of other nations to some useful purpose. The mechanical contrivances of the Asiatic workman may not be applicable to any process employed in England; but they may suggest useful additions to the knowledge of the industrial arts. We do not need punkahs to cool our chambers; but the theory of ventilation is in its infant stage amongst us. In the simple matter of oyster-eating, how Jane Eyre" is a work of the kind we have indicated many inconveniences attended the indulgence, until lately it is intensely real. It may seem hard and ungenial, an ingenious contrivance dispelled the important difficulty. but in its main points it is sternly true to nature, despite Did space permit me, I would enter into a brief classi- the eccentricities of character which it displays. It is fication of the nations which will contribute to the great utterly free from the conventionalisms of novel literature exhibition of the world's industry; and indicate the it breaks new ground, is fresh and vigorous, its lanvarious machines, fabrics, and instruments of all kinds, guage is full of pith and nerve, and the interest it excites in their several degrees of perfection, which the various is strong and concentrated, the passion rising at times to races will furnish as illustrations of their progress in the a height of tragic intensity which is almost sublime. We useful arts. But this would spread my observations over have known old men, who pride themselves on their philoa surface which we have not at our command. What Isophic calmness, take up this book in a moment of have said, however, may excite a little reflection in the curiosity, and become forthwith riveted to the story, reader's mind, and impel him, if he have not already so that they could not lay it down till they had entered warmly into the proposal, to afford the support finished it. Jane Eyre, the heroine, is an unpromising subof his advocacy, for the spirited and complete carrying | ject at first sight-an ill-used and trampled girl, thrown on out of an idea at once so original and grand. Foreigners the charity of her relatives, and treated by them to a will flock to England by thousands, the population of worse than dog's life. The author's picture of the early London will be enormously swelled. It will be an era struggles of her heroine is minute and painful, but we in the history of the industrial arts. It will carry fear it is a record of actual experience. Against this state electric chains of communication from all parts of the of things she revolts, and is then sent to a charity-school, world to the metropolis, and rivet the links of national of the internal life of which we are furnished with a friendship. Consequently, it is to be hoped that nothing graphic delineation. She becomes a governess, at eighteen, will occur to prevent the realization of an idea of which with a mind prematurely familiarized with the hard dealPrince Albert has, and I think judiciously, been made ings of the world to the helpless-against which the book the mouth-piece. JERICHO. may be regarded as an indignant protest. The characters with which she meets, in her new sphere, are those on which the interest of the story eventually turns. Adele, the child-an impersonation of grace, coquetry, and feminine frivolity; Mr. Rochester, her father-a clever, abrupt, rugged, vigorous, original man, in whom the interest of the reader is excited in an extraordinary degree, in connection with the history and fortunes of the no less vigorous, true-hearted, self-reliant, and original little governess herself. But we need not go further into the characteristics of a book that must already be familiar to all novel readers. Notices of New Works. Shirley. By the author of "Jane Eyre." 3 vols. THERE are three novels, the productions of women, which Our novel literature has undergone a remarkable change of late years. Since the reign of Walter Scott we have ceased to be satisfied with the picturesque and the historical, but long for something that takes a firm hold of our feelings, and stirs up our soul to its depths. The old taste, which revelled in the novels and romances of Mrs. Radcliffe and such like, has quite passed away, as the loads of unread rubbish on the shelves of the older circulating libraries abundantly testify. The popular appetite is now for something real, life-like, and written with a purpose. The materials of the most successful of our modern novels are drawn from common every-day life. The author of "Mary Barton eliminates her beautiful story from the most unpromising of all fields-the miserable abodes of factory workpeople in a manufacturing town. Charles Dickens draws his best pictures in daguerreotype minuteness from the humblest characters in city life. Narratives of actual existence, even the very homeliest realities, are now preferred to the fancy tales of great lords and ladies of fashionable life, which used so generally to satisfy the novel-reading public, not very long ago. Whatever you tell us, the cry now is,-let it be something the mind can rest on as a truth, something real, or founded on fact, and at least the reflex of some actual condition. "Welcome the vulgarest truth, rather In reading "Jane Eyre," we were forcibly struck with the character of the scenery depicted in the book, and especially with that part of it descriptive of the young woman's flight from Rochester, into a remote valley among the hills, far away from the busy highways of men, and where one night, in her despair, she lay down in the shadow of a huge cliff or crag, canopied by the starspangled vault of heaven overhead; then her wandering in the dark night up the moors towards a twinkling far-off light; the description of that rugged and thinly-peopled valley in which she for some time found a home and a shelter-the patois of the country folks, their customs and their usages, all brought forcibly to our mind the wild, mountainous district stretching along the back of the West Riding of Yorkshire, generally known by the name of "The Craven district.' We saw before us Kilnsey Cragg, the bounding "Fells" of Upper Wharfedale, and the huge hills piled up into the skies all through that wide but rarely traversed district. Objections have, we perceive, been taken to the scenery of "Jane Eyre," that it is outré, wild, and un-English, but such objections will at once cease when the district referred to has been known. In "Jane Eyre" you have it before you in all its force; and no one will venture to aver that it does not admirably suit the character of the book. Wordsworth's "Excursion" gives you a better idea of the Cumberland mountains than any guide-book, and so does "Jane Eyre" of the Yorkshire hill-country. Wordsworth transcribes into his immortal poem the very spirit of the mountains, because he has drunk in the influences of the a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are scenery; and so does the author of "Jane Eyre "of the often under an illusion about women, they do not read Fells of Yorkshire, and for the same reason-that she has them in a true light, they misapprehend them, both for lived among them. In "Shirley "-her new book-we good and evil, their good woman is a queer thing, half have the same kind of scenery, the same strong characters, doll, and half angel; their bad woman almost always a the same country folks, with the same broad, unmistake- fiend. Then to hear them fall into ecstasies with each able Yorkshire, true to the life. She cannot get out of other's creations, worshipping the heroine of such a poem Yorkshire yet; it has so far been her world. And there-novel-drama, thinking it fine-divine ! Fine and are tragedies enacted in every village, even the remotest and meanest, which would thrill the hearts of men, could they but find an utterance through the lips of genius. The scene of " Shirley," is laid in a manufacturing village of the West Riding, a few miles west of Bradford, which is here disguised under the name of Stillbro', and the time is about the beginning of the present century, when war reigned abroad, and invention was making rapid strides, following close upon the heels of James Watt's gigantic discovery of steam. We have here woollen factories, and starved operatives thrown out of work by the new inventions, issuing in frame-breaking and mill-burning by the "Luddites," as they were called. Then every mill containing the new machines had to be guarded at night by armed men, yeomanry, or soldiers, and murders of masters, by famished and exasperated men, not unfrequently occurred. One of these masters is a hero in this story, but he is not one of the best characters of the book. He is half-foreign, and the author is far most at home in hitting off the character of a rugged Yorkshireman, which she does to perfection. Her Mr. Yorke, and Joe Scott are excellent specimens of this. The latter is a factory mechanic, and his master, Mr. Moore, asks him on one occasion "You don't suppose you're civilized, do you?" " 'Middling, middling, maister. I reckon'at us manufacturing lads i'the North is a deal more intelligent, and knows a deal more nor th' farming folk i' the south. Trade sharpens our wits; and them that's mechanics, like me, is forced to think. There's many a one amang them greasy chaps 'at smells o' oil, and amang them dyers wi' blue and black skins, that has a long head, and that can tell what a fooil of a law is, as well as ye or old Yorke, and a deal better nor soft uns like Christopher Sykes o' Whinbury, and greet hectoring nowts like yond' Irish Peter-Helstone's curate." And, by the way, there are three curates introduced into the story, that represent a greater concentration of ninnyism, than is we believe to be found in Yorkshire. The author evidently does not love curates, and she shows it. She is very bitter against men in many ways. She speaks as one outraged and aggrieved by their contemptuous treatment of her sex. The best of her men are tyrants where women are concerned. Mr. Helstone, the vicar, is a worthy man, but she makes his treatment of the sex altogether unworthy. She supposes the case of him marrying a second time, and then, she says, "the second Mrs. Helstone, inversing the natural order of insect existence, would have fluttered through the honeymoon a bright admired butterfly, and crawled the rest of her days, a sordid, trampled worm." In such like reflections, which come out here and there, we discern indications of a bitterness-we had almost said a fierceness-for which there is probably some good cause. But there are few women of strong powers of mind, such as the author of this book unquestionably is, who do not feel that the social position of woman is not at all what it should be-that she is still the Poor thing of usages! coerced, compelled, Victim when wrong, and martyr oft when right; and hence she speaks in her angry and indignant tone. She complains with some degree of reason, that women are not understood, and in one place, her heroine is thus made to speak : "If men could see us as we really are, they would be divine it may be, but quite artificial, false as the rose in my best bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point; if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters and first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour.'" The author strongly desiderates some improvement and enlargement of the sphere of occupation for women, but does not very clearly specify how that is to be arranged. We give one or two passage bearing on this topic. "Caroline,' demanded Miss Keeldar, abruptly, dont you wish you had a profession-a trade?' "I wish it fifty times a day. As it is, I often wonder what I came into the world for. I long to have something absorbing and compulsory to fill my head and hands, and to occupy my thoughts.' "Can labour alone make a human being happy?' "No; but it can give varieties of pain, and prevent us from breaking our hearts with a single tyrant mastertorture. Besides, successful labour has its recompense; a vacant, weary, lonely, hopeless life has none.' "But hard labour and learned professions, they say, make woman masculine, coarse, unwomanly.' "And what does it signify, whether unmarried and never-to-be-married women are inattractive and inelegant or not?-provided only they are decent, decorous, and neat-it is enough.'' A sorrowful picture of the life of a governess is given in the experience of Mrs. Prior, which bears out all that we have said in this Journal as to the conditions of that lot. There is much that is melancholy in the following remarks: "God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe in my heart we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it. Existence never was originally meant to be that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing it often becomes to many, and is becoming to me, among the rest." "Nobody" she went on- "nobody in particular is to blame, that I can see, for the state in which things are; and I cannot tell, however much I may puzzle over it, how they are to be altered for the better; but I feel there is something wrong somewhere. I believe single women should have more to do-better chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they possess now. . Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood. The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions; they have something to do: their sisters have no earthly employment, but household work and sewing; no earthly pleasure but an unprofitable visiting; and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better. This stagnant state of things makes them decline in health; they are never well; and their minds and views shrink to wondrous narrowness. The great wish-the sole view of any one of them is to be married, but the majority of them will never marry; they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they dress, to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule; they don't want them; they hold them very cheap: they say-I have heard them say it with sneering laughs many a time-the matrimonial market is overstocked. Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manoeuvres; they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home? If you ask, they would answer-sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly, all their lives long, as if they had no germ of faculties for anything else,-a doctrine as reasonable to hold, as it would be that the fathers have no faculties but for eating what their daughters cook, or for wearing what they sew. Could men live so themselves? Would they not be very weary? And, when there came no relief to their weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation, would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids,-envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage, which to celibacy is denied. Fathers! cannot you alter those things? Perhaps, not all at once; but, consider the matter well when it is brought before you-receive it as a theme worthy of thought; do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters, and not to blush for them;-then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuverer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered, they will still be a plague and a care-sometimes a disgrace to you. Cultivate them-give them scope and work-they will be your gayest companions in health, your tenderest nurses in sickness, and your most faithful prop in age." Surely our author views things too sorrowfully, and on the darker side only. We might say a word or two for the brighter aspect of the pictare, had we space here. The angry spirit is allowed to express itself too freely. There is a want of quiet, loving power, while of discontented, rebellious power, there is rather too much. When the author has expended the latter force, we may expect to have some manifestations of her more serene and hopeful spirit, and in trust that she will recognise in life a scene of duty and conflict, in which all must bear their part lovingly, firmly, and, if possible, cheerfully. It is scarcely necessary we should enter into the details of a story, which needs no introduction of ours to commend it to general perusal. The story does not show very great mastery in construction: its materials are not always well put together: in some parts it is rather heavy reading. It is only when we get into the third volume that our interest becomes riveted. she describes in " Shirley," about midway between the towns of Bradford and Colne. "Shirley" is certain to be a favourite,-not, perhaps, so decided and general a favourite as "Jane Eyre;" but its unquestionable power, its graphic descriptions, and the intense interest of its story, taken as a whole; its admirable sketches of female character, and the originality and freshness of observation which it exhibits throughout, cannot fail to secure for it a very extensive and favourable perusal. VENTILATION OF DWELLINGS. THE necessity of ventilation will be at once understood, when we state that every full-grown healthy human being requires to inhale, for the purposes of physical subsistence, about one gallon of pure air per minute, or sixty gallons every hour. And, as the air once breathed is unfitted for being breathed a second time, it is necessary that careful provision should be made in every dwelling, for the removal of the vitiated air, and the admission of pure air in its stead. The neglect of a provision of this kind is a great source of unhealthiness and mortality among all classes, but especially among the labouring population. The houses in which they live are for the most part in densely populated neighbourhoods, where the streets are badly cleansed and drained, the houses packed close together in courts and alleys, and where the impure air without is almost as much to be dreaded as the impure air within. Hence, we invariably find in such neighbourhoods a large proportion of the ill-health and mortality of towns. Cellar-dwellings are especially noxious to life; for there carbonic acid gas-a deadly poison when inhaled is largely mixed with the atmosphere, and the removal of it is rendered difficult by reason of its density being greater than that of common air, and its tendency to gravitate into the lowest parts. Cellar-dwellings are now very properly prohibited from being used as dwellings in some of our larger towns; but still they find tenants. The cottage-dwellings in most of our towns and cities are yet very generally unwholesome, and seem as if constructed so that efficient ventilation shall be next to impossible. The crowded state of these dwellings is also a great source of unhealthiness as well as demoralization. A large family is often crowded together in one or two apartments-all the members of the family sleeping in one room. This mode of living, besides being unwholesome, has a most contaminating influence on the moral condition of society. Families crowded together in a small apartment, lose in self-respect; the sense of decency becomes blunted; they become indifferent to neatness, delicacy, purity, order, and comfort; and coarseness and familiarity, from being daily familiar to youth, become the confirmed habits of their maturer years. The story traces the fortunes of two girls, Caroline Helstone and Shirley Keeldar-the former an orphan, the latter an heiress. They afford striking contrasts of character; the one being retiring, timid, gentle; the other brilliant, sparkling, bold. Both have their loves, which they nourish in secret; and in the denouement of these loves consists the interest of the story. Both suffer from Imagine a sleeping-room containing about 600 cubic unrest and dissatisfaction-want of appreciation and want feet of atmospheric air-(each individual requiring for of sympathy. It is to be hoped that they both found respiration not less than 340 cubic feet in the course of peace (for we believe the characters to be drawn from the twenty-four hours) and that in this room are crowded life) in each being wedded to the mate of her heart. Not-together in two or three beds, father, mother, children of withstanding the author's protests on woman's behalf, it is clear that she recognises marriage as the highest destiny of her sex on earth. Some of the love scenes are powerfully drawn, and touch the feelings with the true enchanter's wand. There is great genius in her delineations of passion, feeling, and despair. Sometimes she is daring, but never reckless. There are scenes of quiet power too, which make the tears start. There is a good deal of quiet humour also, in her descriptions of uncouth curates and begging incumbents; and her familiarity with this class must be admitted, when we inform the reader that the author is herself the daughter of a clergyman, and a resident in the same wild district both sexes, of all ages, from infancy to adolescence,-and what can the result be, other than debility, disease, and moral impurity? Hence one cause of the great mortality in the working-class localities of our large towns-in some of them, one half of all the children that are born dying under five years old. Now, so far as regards unwholesomeness of locality, we believe that the legislature and the municipal authorities of towns generally, have of late been doing their duty in improving drainage, sewerage, and external cleanliness, sometimes to an extent considerably in advance of the popular demands. But they cannot enter into the home itself: there the working classes them selves, and especially the housewives of working men, must take the matter in hand, and adopt the requisite steps to secure the efficient ventilation and healthfulness of their dwellings. poison, and a hot-bed of disease. Sleep in it will be unsound and unrefreshing; the occupant will rise up in the morning languid and oppressed, debility will be in course of time induced, and not improbably, serious disease. The working classes, as all other classes, have their The regular admission of the atmosphere into our own health very much in their own power. They can rooms, at a proper temperature, instead of causing practice habitual cleanliness, and secure the efficient" colds," will generally be found their best preventitive. ventilation of their houses. Nothing is so cheap as air, The absence of pure air is the cause of most of the inand water is to be had at small cost. These ought to be dispositions that are generally attributed to "draughts." used in abundance everywhere. It is not necessary, When the body is over-heated, and shut up in a close, either, that any working man, in the receipt of average unventilated room, the lungs and the skin are brought good wages, should live in an unhealthy locality. The to such a state of morbid susceptibility that the invigorent of good cottage dwellings is very little, if at all more rating action of the pure atmosphere, when the system than that of bad ones; and if men were to avoid taking is suddenly exposed to it, often produces colds and inhouses in districts which were filthy and undrained, flammation, sometimes attended by fatal results. The shunning unwholesome neighbourhoods as they would a prevention of colds and catarrhs, and the preservation of pestilence, doubtless landlords would soon consult their a proper temperature, are quite compatible with efficient own interests, and put their cottage tenements in a more ventilation; and a stream of pure air may, even in the wholesome and attractive condition for occupancy. Were all coldest season, be kept quietly undulating through the close streets, and dirty lanes and courts thus to be avoided, apartment, so as both to keep the temperature agreeable landlords would certainly be more careful how they built and the air sufficiently pure. houses in future. A few very brief directions will suffice, in reference to the methods of efficiently ventilating the apartments of dwellings. Two conditions are requisite-first, that a sufficient quantity of pure air has free access to the apartment, and second, that there be a free exit for the exhausted or deleterious air from the apartment. Indeed the one condition involves the other. The manner in which the first condition is generally fulfilled is, by the air entering the doors or windows, or through the chinks in them; and the second, as houses are constructed in this country, is effected by the chimney, through which (especially when a good fire burns in the grate) the foul air is drawn up out of the apartment. The main problem of ventilation is-how is the air of the apartment to be so changed, and rapidly changed, as not to expose the body to injurious draughts of cold air during the process of change? Dr. Reid, who has devoted a great deal of time and pains to the study of this subject, recommends that the air should be allowed to enter the house freely by a large aperture; that it should first be received (when the temperature is low) into a stove-room; and, after being sufficiently warmed there, that it should then pass freely into all the apartments, either through the doors or by express channels. The used air will be carried off by the chimneys and an open fire; or, when the number of occupants of the apartment is large, by larger and express openings. This is the whole secret and art of ventilation. But, of course, it is not every house that can command a "stove-room;" and any ventilatory instructions intended for general use, must be of a much simpler character than the above. Let it be first understood that the great want is fresh air constantly passing through the apartment. Fortunately there are chinks in most doors and windows which admit of a partial renovation of the air, otherwise the results of the bad ventilation of rooms would be much more apparent even than they now are. The huts of the agricultural peasantry, which are well supplied, even through reason of their very miserableness, with pure air, are often healthier than many of the snug, well-built dwellings of our large towns. The doors and windows of apartments ought to be frequently thrown open, to allow the thorough draught to pass through them,-the chimneys being left quite open. Bed-room chimneys ought never to be stopped up. The windows of the sleeping apartment ought to be left open for the greater part of the day, and all the bed-clothes freely exposed to the sun and the air. When this is neglected, when the windows are allowed to remain closed all day, the chimney is kept stuffed up, and the bed is unaired, the apartment becomes a receptacle of Where gas is burned in any apartment, the deterioration of the air is very rapid, and consequently, ventilation ought to be so much the more carefully provided for. Combustion poisons the atmosphere precisely as respiration does; and where both gas is burning and human beings are breathing, the air becomes doubly deteriorated, and therefore the supply of pure air ought to be so much the more abundant. This ought to be carefully provided for in shops and warehouses where many burners are used. Young men and women are often kept till very late hours in such places, exposed to poisoned air, which produces the most deleterious results on their constitutions. This is one, and not the least, of the evils of late hours of business. The best method of removing the carbonic acid and heat produced by the combustion of gas, is to have tubes proceeding from every burner, and opening into the chimney. The impure air might also be carried off by means of a common tin pipe placed in the roof of each apartment, and opening into the outer air. Workshops might be ventilated by several methods. Mr. Poynbee has invented a ventilating pane, which is very efficient for this purpose; it allows the entrance of the external air without causing any draught, in which consists its great value. Dr. Arnott has also contrived a very efficient chimney ventilator, which may be had for 12s. or 15s. It is inserted into the chimney near the ceiling of the apartment, and being provided with a balanced valve, it admits of the escape of the heated and impure air, while it prevents any return of smoke. It is surely the duty of employers to adopt all such reasonable and ample methods of promoting the health and comfort of those in their employment. ON THE CURABILITY OF INSANITY. "It cannot but be a matter of the highest gratification to every humane mind to perceive, as the general result of the statistical tables of insanity hitherto published, that at least one half of the miserable subjects of this most fearful calamity are capable, under proper treatment, of recovery or improvement. This cannot be said of many of the commonest diseases which afflict mankind. And yet how sedulously will friends and relatives watch and persevere in every remedy till the last gasp; while the earliest germinations of consumption, for instance, the caprices of temper, or the changes in character, which are the shadows of coming events far more frightful and deplorable than the excavations of scrofula, or the agonies of cancer, are from ignorance unheeded, or concealed from shame; and when the necessary seclusion has at length for interference, how wearied of expense, or desirous of been sought for, how impatient for results, how anxious change!"-From Dr. Winslow's Journal of Psychological Medicine. |