302 Securities against Fire, &c. 
12. Our last article regards a repetition of some of our hints: first, 
as to the importance of a wise plan for the construction of our build- 
ings, so as to prevent the commencement of a conflagration in 
them, and then the extension of that mischief. In a country where 
the facility of obtaining lumber is great, we often see brick walls for 
buildings, the roofs of which, are covered with wood; and various 
other hazards of the kind are wantonly incurred in the U. States. 
When we add to this, the neglect of guarding staircases and passages 
from fire, in the French manner, so sagaciously pointed out by Dr. 
Franklin, we must perceive, that we have yet some important les- 
sons to learn as to conflagrations in buildings.—Omitting to speak of 
frequent fires among the frail buildings of the Asiatics, and of the 
burning of Rome under Nero, and of Moscow, in our day, where de- 
sign had the chief share in the catastrophe ; we must admit, that the 
greatest conflagration known in history of a casual description, was 
that of London, the metropolis of our ancestors, in 1666. The ground 
floors of the houses then burned, were indeed in many instances cover- 
ed with rushes ;* but a considerable fire occurred in London in the last 
century, the London tavern being built on a part of the ruins; and 
numerous fires still occur in that city, although many useful regulations 
to preventit are by law, constantly imposed on builders. Butin Eng- 
land, they have not yet applied to use, Dr. Franklin’s discovery above 
mentioned; the principles of which, are perhaps, not universally un- 
derstood in France itself; and these principles, probably, are as little 
known in England, as in the U. States. But it is time that they 
should be known in both countries; and particularly in the U. States, 
where the increase of population will make the houses in large towns 
every day more and more to approach each other, so as to favor the 
spreading of fire in them.t 
* Dr. Jortin in his life of Erasmus, Vol. i, p. 77, has this passage. “ Erasmus (in 
a letter to a friend,) ascribes the plague, from which England was hardly ever free, 
and the sweating sickness, partly to the incommodious form and bad exposition of the 
houses, to the filthiness of the streets, and to the sluttishness within doors. The 
floors, (says he,) are commonly of clay, strewed with rushes, under which lies un- 
molested, an ancient collection of grease, fragments, bones, &c.”—Dr. Jortin in his 
second vol. (pp. 341, 842,) has given the original letter by Erasmus, which is still 
more pointed than the above summary.—Neither plague nor sweating sickness, has 
occurred in London, since 1666. 
t Even “ Rome itself, (according to the proverb,) was not built in a day.”? Mar- 
tial, in his time saw great improvements made in it, even as to the streets; for which 
