THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



277 



other, that hundreds of thousands of human beings 

 are neither suppUed with Hght nor with air, and 

 are compelled to carry on their professions in what 

 seems to a stranger almost total darkness. Pi'ovi- 

 dence, more beneficent than man, has provided a 

 means of lighting up to a certain extent the work- 

 man's home, by the expanding power of the pupil 

 of his eye, in order to admit a greater quantity of 

 rays, and by an increased sensibility of his retina, 

 which renders visible what is feebly illuminated : 

 but the very exercise of such powers is j)ainful and 

 insalutary; and every attempt that is made to see, 

 when seeing is an effort, or to read and work with 

 a straining eye and an erring hand, is injurious to 

 the organ of vision, and must, sooner or later, im- 

 pair its powers. Thus deprived of the light of 

 day, thousands are obliged to carry on their trades 

 principally by artificial light — by the consumption 

 of tallow, oil, or carburetted hydrogen gas — thus 

 inhaling from morning till midnight the offensive 

 odours, and breathing the polluted effluvia, which 

 are more or less the products of artificial illumina- 

 tion. 



It is in vain to expect that such evils, shortening 

 and rendering miserable the life of man, can be 

 removed by legislation or by arbitrary power. 

 Attempts are gradually being made, in various 

 great cities, to replace their densely congregated 

 streets and dwelhngs by structures at once orna- 

 mental and salutary ; and Europe is now admiring 

 that great renovation in a neighbouring capital, by 

 which hundreds of streets and thousands of dwel- 

 lings, once the seat of poverty and crime, are now 

 replaced by architectural combinations the most 

 beautiful, and by hotels and palaces which vie with 

 the finest edifices of Greek or of Roman art. 



These great improvements, however, are neces- 

 sarily local and partial, and centuries must pass 

 away before we can expect those revolutions in our 

 domestic and city architecture under which the 

 masses of the people will find a cheerful and well- 

 lighted and well-ventilated home. AVe must, 

 therefore, attack the evil as it exists, and call upon 

 science to give us such a remedy as she can supply. 

 Science does possess such a remedy, which, how- 

 ever, has its limits, but within those limits her 

 principles and methods are unquestionable and 

 efficacious. 



Wherever there is a window there is light, which 

 it is intended to admit. In narrow streets and 

 lanes this portion of light comes from the sky, and 

 its value as an illuminating agent depends on its 

 magnitude or area, and on its varying distances 

 from the sun in its daily path. But whether it be 

 large or small, bright or obscure, it is the only 

 source of light which any window can command ; 

 and the problem which science pretends to solve is 

 to throw into the dark apartment as much light as 

 possible — all the light, indeed, excepting that which 

 is necessarily lost in the process employed. Let 

 us suppose that the street is a fathom wide, or two 

 yards, and that the two opposite faces of it are of 

 such a nature that we can see out of a window a 

 considerable portion of the sky two yards wide. 

 Now, the lintel of the window generally j)rojects 

 six or eight inches beyond the outer surface of the 

 panes of glass, so that if the window is at a con- 



siderable distance below the himinous portion of 

 the sky, not a single ray from that portion can fall 

 u])on the panes of glass. If we suppose the panes 

 of glass to be made flush with the outer wall, rays 

 from every part of the luminous space will fall upon 

 the outer surface of the glass, but so obliquely that 

 it will be nearly all reflected, and the small portion 

 which does pass through the glass will have no 

 illuminating power, as it must fall upon the surface 

 of the stone lintel on which the window now rests. 

 If we now remove our window, and substitute ano- 

 ther in which all the panes of glass are roughly 

 ground on their outside, and flush with the outer 

 wall, a mass of light will be introduced into the 

 apartment, reflected from the innumerable faces or 

 facets which the rough grinding of the glass has 

 jjroduced. The whole window will appear as if the 

 sky were beyond it, and from every point of this 

 luminous surface light will radiate into all parts of 

 the room. The effect thus obtained might be 

 greatly increased were we permitted to allow the 

 lower part of the window to be placed beyond the 

 face of the wall, and thus give the ground surface 

 of the panes such an inclined position as to enable 

 them to catch a larger portion of the sky. The 

 plates or sheets of glass which should be employed 

 in this process, may be so corrugated on one side, 

 as even to throw in light that had suffered total 

 reflection. In aid of this method of distributing 

 light, it would be advisable to have the opposite 

 faces of the street, even to the chimney tops, white- 

 washed, and kept white with lime; and for the 

 same reason, the ceiling and walls and flooring of 

 the apartment should be as white as possible, and 

 all the furniture of the lightest colours. Having 

 seen such eflects produced by imperfect means, we 

 feel as if we had introduced our poor workman or 

 needlewoman from a dungeon into a summer-house. 

 By pushing out the windows, we have increased 

 the quantity of air which they breathe, and we 

 have enabled the housemaid to look into dark cor- 

 ners where there had hitherto nestled all the 

 elements of corruption. To these inmates the sun 

 has risen sooner and set later, and the midnight 

 lamp is no longer lighted when all nature is smiling 

 under the blessed influences of day. 



But it is not merely to the poor man's home that 

 these processes are applicable. In all great towns, 

 where neither palaces nor houses can be insulated, 

 there are, in almost every edifice, dark and gloomy 

 crypts thirsting for light ; and in the city of Lon- 

 don there are warehouses and places of business 

 where the light of day almost never enters. On 

 visiting a friend, whose duty confined him to his 

 desk during the oflficial part of the day, we found 

 him with bleared eyes, struggling against the fee- 

 ble light which the opposite wall threw into his 

 window. We counselled him to extend a blind of 

 fine white muslin on the outside of his window, 

 and flush with the wall. The experiment was soon 

 made. The light of the sky above was caught by 

 the fibres of the linen and thrown straight upon his 

 writing-table, as if it had been reflected from an 

 equal surface of ground glass. We recollect ano- 

 ther case equally illustrative of our process. A 

 party visiting the mausoleum of a Scottish noble- 

 man, wished to see the gilded receptacles of the 



