214 SCIENCE IN 8HOET CHAPTERS. 



Regarded from a national point of view, I am convinced 

 that 37. a ton in London, and corresponding prices in other 

 districts, if thus maintained, would he an immense national 

 blessing. I say this, being convinced that nothing short of 

 pecuniary pains and penalties of ruinous severity will stir 

 the blind prejudices of Englishmen, and force them to de- 

 sist from their present stupid and sinful waste of the great- 

 est mineral treasure of the island. 



One of the grossest of our national manifestations of 

 Conservative stupidity is our senseless idolatrous worship 

 of that domestic fetish, "the Englishman's fireside. " We 

 sacrifice health, we sacrifice comfort, we begrime our towns 

 and all they contain with sooty foulness, we. expend an 

 amount far exceeding the interest of the national debt, and 

 discount our future prospects of national . prosperity, in 

 order that we may do what? Enjoy the favorite recreation 

 of idiots. It is a" well-known physiological fact that an ab- 

 solute idiot, with a cranium measuring sixteen inches in 

 circumference, will sit and stare at a blazing fire for hours 

 and hours continuously, all the day long, except when 

 feeding, and that this propensity varies with the degree of 

 mental vacuity. 



Few sights are more melancholy than the contemplation 

 of a party of English fire-worshipers seated in a semicircle 

 round the family fetish on a keen frosty day. They hud- 

 dle together, roast their knees, and grill their faces, in 

 order to escape the chilling blast that is brought in from 

 all the chinks of leaky doors and windows by the very 

 agent they employ, at so much cost, for the purpose of 

 keeping the cold away. The bigger the fire the greater the 

 draught, the hotter their faces the colder their backs, the 

 greater the consumption of coal the more abundant the 

 crop of chilblains, rheumatism, catarrh, and other well-de- 

 served miseries. 



The most ridiculous element of such an exhibition is 

 the complacent self-delusion of the victims. They believe 

 that their idol bestows upon them an amount of comfort 

 unknown to other people, that it affords the most per- 

 fect and salubrious ventilation, and, above all, that it is a 

 "cheerful" institution. The "cheerfulness" is, perhaps, 



