“This side enough is toasted;
Then turn me, tyrant, and eat,
And see whether raw or roasted
I make the better meat.”
We, all of us, over our Christmas fires, present this choice of raw or roast, and we don't thank your principles of ventilation for it. Then say these pertinacious people, that they also disapprove of draughts; but they don't seem to mind boring holes in a gentleman's floor, or knocking through the sacred walls of home. This is their plan. They say, that you should have, if possible, a pipe connected with the air without, passing behind the cheeks of your stove, and opening under your fire, about, on, or close before your hearth. They say, that from this source the fire will be supplied so well, that it will no longer suck in draughts over your shoulders, and between your legs, from remote corners of the room. They say, moreover, that if this aperture be large enough, it will supply all the fresh air needed in your room, to replace that which has ascended and passed out, through a hole which you are to make in your chimney near the ceiling. They say, that an up-draught will clear this air away so quietly that you will not need even a valve; though you may have one fitted and made ornamental at a trifling cost. They would recommend you to make another hole in the wall opposite your chimney, near the ceiling also, to establish a more effectual current in the upper air. Then, they say, you will have a fresh air, and no draughts. Fresh air, yes, at the expense of a hole in the floor, and two holes in the wall. We might get fresh air, gentlemen, on a much larger scale by pulling the house down. They say, you should not mind the holes. Windows are not architectural beauties, yet we like them for admitting light; and some day it may strike us that the want of ventilators is a neighbor folly to the want of windows.
This they suggest as the best method of adapting our old houses to their new ideas. New houses they would have so built as to include this system of ventilation in their first construction, and so include it as to make it more effectual. But really, if people want to know how to build what are called well-ventilated houses, they must not expect me to tell them; let them buy Mr. Hosking's book on “The proper Regulation of Buildings in Towns.”
Up to this date, as I am glad to know, few architects have heard of ventilation. Under church galleries we doze through the most lively sermons, in public meetings we pant after air, but we have architecture; perhaps an airy style sometimes attempts to comfort us. These circumstances are, possibly, unpleasant at the time, but they assist the cause of general unhealthiness. Long may our architects believe that human lungs are instruments of brass; and let us hope that, when they get a ventilating fit, they will prefer strange machines, pumping, screwing, steaming apparatus. May they dispense then, doctored air, in draughts and mixtures.[4]
Fresh air in certain favored places—as in Smithfield, for example—is undoubtedly an object of desire. It is exceedingly to be regretted, if the rumors be correct, that the result of a Commission of Inquiry threatens, by removing Smithfield, to destroy the only sound lung this metropolis possesses. The wholesome nature of the smell of cows is quite notorious. Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His end being in sight, some comrades brought him out to die. What Humboldt calls “the fresh air” fell upon him, and, instead of dying, he revived, eventually getting well. I have no doubt that there was a cow on board, and the man smelt her. Now, if so great an effect was produced by the proximity of one cow, how great must be the advantage to the sick in London of a central crowded cattle-market!
XI. Exercise.
There is a little tell-tale muscle in the inner corner of the eye, which, if you question it, will deliver a report into your looking-glass touching the state of the whole muscular system which lies elsewhere hidden in your body. When it is pale, it praises you. Muscular development is, by all means, to be kept down. Some means of holding it in check we have already dwelt upon. Muscular power, like all other power, will increase with exercise. We desire to hold the flesh in strict subjection to the spirit. Bodily exercise, therefore, must be added to the number of those forces which, by strengthening the animal, do damage to the spiritual man.