THE WARMING OF HOUSES. 473 



necessary that it should be kept in mind throughout while treating of 

 the former. In fact, infusing heated air is a more economical and 

 pleasanter mode of warming houses than direct radiation, and it is 

 only by their capability of combining the two methods that open fires 

 can maintain ascendency over stoves, and it is only by uniting proper 

 ventilation with stoves that they ought to be tolerated. 



Lastly, all appliances should be simple and as self-acting as pos- 

 sible. This is essential for those intended for the use of the poor, 

 whose treatment of them is of the roughest, and who neither need nor 

 understand any thing complicated. If there be a damper to be drawn, 

 or a handle to be turned by them, neither will be drawn nor turned 

 except occasionally the wrong way, and if there be any cover or part 

 that is loose, it is safe to be lost. At the risk, therefore, of some 

 waste, their scanty fuel must be consumed in the most primitive man- 

 ner possible. With somewhat less force the same caution may be 

 given to those who design apparatus for the upper classes. Every 

 thing even for them should be as self-acting as possible, for, though 

 individuals may for a time take a fancy to an ingenious arrangement 

 that requires personal adjustment, they tire of it in time ; servants in 

 their succession are not to be drilled into its use, and the thing is 

 soon left to itself, and failure is the inevitable result. 



To proceed to the several appliances themselves : 



In the race to attain economy ', it must be acknowledged, at the 

 outset, that close stoves completely distance open grates, and that they 

 in their turn are as far ahead of all gas-apparatus as at present in- 

 vented ; and yet all have some advantages as well as disadvantages 

 peculiar to themselves, to which it is worth giving some consideration. 



In stoves, the heat from fuel can be almost wholly extracted and 

 utilized, and even the little that escapes with the gaseous products of 

 combustion is heavily taxed when its ultimate exit is by the few in- 

 significant pipes, or diminutive chimney-stalks, which alone are suf- 

 fered to peep above the roofs of houses on the Continent. English 

 ideas of comfort will not, however, permit of the general introduction 

 of the stove system into this country, and it is hardly to be desired 

 that it should, unless great improvement be grafted upon that in vogue 

 abroad, in which stuffiness is ever an accompaniment of warmth. 



Our British privilege, however, of being able to poke the fire, 

 although purchased dearly by its concomitant dust and the labor it 

 entails upon servants, is not likely soon to be relinquished, and the 

 luxury of an open fire is a fact which no theory can demolish. 



Still, the grates in common use savor of barbarism, and much can 

 and should be done to gain further refinement, economy, and imnmnity 

 from nuisance. There is no need, for instance, that our roofs should 

 be disfigured by the ugly and even comical flue terminals which Dick- 

 ens satirized in one of his latest Christmas publications. We ought 

 not to be subject to vexatious down-draughts in windy weather, nor to 



