table fragments, but never strung together those that were incongruous. Modern German architects have their portfolios of prints of Gothic warious,' and when they want to build a church or a town-hall, first outline a factory, and then trick it out with every sort of various detail, mouldings, out of their own heads, of the nineteenth century, they never trouble themselves to measure and map old mouldings-foliage of the sixteenth century, windows of the tenth, tracery (bad) of the thirteenth. Mr. Venus knew every bone, and where it ought to go, and to what sized skeleton it belonged. A German architect has no idea as to what ought to be done with his scraps, which go together, and where they should go.

And the reason of this ignorance is-military service. The man who intends to become an architect has perhaps not passed as 'reif,' and so serves for three years. These are the years in which he ought to be going over the country, tape, compasses, and T-ruler in hand, studying architecture, and taking down good examples in his book. When his service is over, he sets up in his profession, buys Heideloff's Ornamentik des Mittelalters,' and Lübke, and thinks himself able to design anything from a school to a cathedral. And this is why the traveller of taste is constrained, in passing one of his creations, to sing like Serpolette, Grénicheux, and the Bailli, in Les Cloches de Corneville I shut my eyes! I shut my eyes! I shut my eyes!'

CHAPTER XIX.

THE STOVE.

Grumio: A cold world, Curtis, in every office, and therefore fire.— Taming of the Shrew, act iv. sc. 1.

I CAN quite understand the worship of the Parsees. If ever I abjure Christianity, it will be to pay my adorations to Fire.

Warmth is more precious than food, and in our raw, damp English climate we need it almost more than where the winters are keener but the cold is dry. We suffer from cold more in England than where cold is severer, but this is due chiefly to an unscientific method of heating our rooms.

The English grates in common use are adapted for the combustion of a large amount of coal, and therefore are greatly to the advantage of the coal-merchant; but they are wasteful to the consumer.

The amount of heat radiated by the open fireplace bears a miserably small proportion to the amount of heat carried up the chimney. The smoke that issues from the top of the chimney is hot. All the heat carried off by the smoke is so much heat wasted; in a word, is so many pence per day, so many shillings per week, and so many pounds per annum out of the consumer's pocket. It is small satisfaction to him to contemplate a wreath of smoke issuing from his chimney, however gracefully it may curl, and know that in that wreath in one day enough caloric has been carried off to have heated his room for a

week. We throw away money wastefully in smoke; we play ducks and drakes with our money in coals. One quarter of the heat generated is utilised by us, and three quarters we throw clean away.

An open fireplace, such as is common in England, is the most barbarous, spendthrift contrivance under the sun. It is the worst contrivance for warming a room that ingenuity could possibly devise. The grate radiates forth a certain amount of heat, and that amount is all we utilise; but the great body of heat is carried up the chimney by the draught generated by the fire. A person sitting before an open fireplace is in a strong draught; his back, his feet, are cold, whilst his face and knees are scorched. The oxygen of the air is burnt in the grate, or helps to burn the coal, and there is a strong current of air from all parts of the room to carry on the combustion. Place the hand in the orifice of the chimney immediately above the fire, and two currents will be detected, a hot one of smoke, and a cold one of air. Both are carried up the chimney. We throw away the heat in our smoke, and we throw away the partially heated air in the room, whilst the exhaustion sucks colder air in from every quarter to replenish the void.

No doubt this artificial draught is of one advantage, it prevents the room becoming close; but this can be prevented quite as well without squandering our heat.

The chimney, rather than the grate, should be the heating apparatus of the room; or, rather, both chimney and grate should unite to heat the room. As our houses are constructed, the chimneys are made utterly useless for this purpose. They are sometimes placed in an outside. wall, so as to throw off their heat into the open air; sometimes in an inner wall, so constructed that one side of the chimney only can give off heat internally, and this

it is prevented from doing by the thickness of the wall and the badly conducting nature of its materials. Moreover, the distance from the mouth of the flue to the ceiling is so short, that the chimney is not allowed the opportunity of throwing off its heat into the room.

If we look to the Germans, who have little coal, and who are obliged to rely on wood as their staple of fuel, which is very costly, we find that they have been driven by their necessities to economise fuel to the utmost; and what is more, we find that they are able to warm a room more effectually with a few chips, or a bundle of fir-cones, than we can with two scuttlesful of coal.

The secret of utilising fuel for heating a room is :1. Bring the fire into the room, and thus let it radiate heat on all four sides, instead of on only one.

2. Do not let the smoke escape out of the room till it is cool.

Now it is evident that if we adhere to these two golden maxims, we are making the very utmost of our fuel; we extract all the heat that we can out of it before we let the refuse smoke and ash escape. The ancient Greeks knew very little about smelting ore. At Laurium they got a certain amount of silver from the rock, and tossed away the dross. But we know now that their refuse is rich in metal, and will well repay the labour of extracting it. English people treat their fuel as barbarously as did the Greeks their silver ore.

The Germans heat their rooms with stoves of tile or iron. The tiled stove is constructed somewhat as follows. It may be square or circular. The diagram represents a section. The fire is lighted in the stove at a, and the smoke rises freely in d, and entirely fills it. When full, the colder smoke descends and is carried off through the flue at c. When, as in old stoves, the receiver is large, and extends

nearly the full height of the room, there is merely a flue from c into the chimney in the wall. But if the stove be

reduced in size, then, to utilise the smoke, the flue of iron is made to perform many turns before it is carried at g into the structural chimney g. At e is a damper. At bis the door to the stove; this is arranged with a simple apparatus to admit a current of air, or to shut air completely off. When a quick sharp fire has been raised, the whole of the receiver has been full of flames, and rapidly becomes so hot that the hand cannot be borne on it. The quick fire dies rapidly out. The moment it is dead, the sooner the better, the damper is turned, and the chimney closed. Consequently the whole stove remains a huge vessel filled with heat, which it continues to radiate into the room for several hours.