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owners, to gain the greatest rents, crowd and honeycomb 

 them together, and give loftiness to add to the mischief. 

 Jnst observe, as one of these barracks rises story above story, 

 how numerous are its flues, and how bending, often at right 

 angles, in their course ; swelling out in one place, narrow and 

 tortuous in another, and withal so rough and rugged in the 

 interior, while every projecting stone, brick, or piece of lime, 

 forms a lodgment for soot, the wonder is, not that they 

 vent badly, but that the smoke ascends at all ! How often 

 do we see the noblest mansions, as well as the humblest cot, 

 defective in this respect ; and if such is the discomfort to the 

 wealthy, that no trouble or expense is spared to remedy a 

 smoky chimney, it should induce a fellow-feeling with our less 

 favoured tenant and poorer neighbour, who are virtually 

 powerless or ignorant to effect the necessary alterations. 



The chimney is the proper medium of ventilation, and its 

 fitness is more essential than either window or doorway for the 

 purpose. In the dwellings of the poor, especially in towns, 

 an atmosphere of sulphurous smoke and floating soot often 

 exists ; and surely the inhaling of it, evinced by the pun- 

 gent taste and suffocating cough, must be unhealthy, and ac- 

 cordingly the inmates are invariably martyrs to nervous and 

 dyspeptic ailments, with their train of suffering and horrors. I 

 believe, too, that living in such an atmosphere is especially an 

 incipient cause of consumption, and also of scrofula; and if 

 this be so, is it not to be accounted for by the greater use 

 of fires amongst us, and the burning of coals, rather than of 

 turf and timber, as much as by changeable weather ? Invalids 

 avoid coal fires by removing to a warmer clime during winter, 

 and thereby escape much irritation of the lungs and nervous 

 system. However disposed, how can a woman manage a house- 

 hold well without health ? and she is the constant inmate of 

 such a residence, with duties requiring much hanging over and 

 about the fire. Circumstances also may constrain her to live 

 in the situation ; and it may be, the husband, having Ins 



