careless people must sometimes get terrible falls; but there is air, light, and dryness. In rocky countries, men naturally live in caves. These are very unfavourable to health, unless the inhabitants are almost always abroad. A cave must be too dark to be wholesome. No dwelling is so healthful as it ought to be which has not sunshine freely let into it. There may be puffs of air, and occasional draughts in some caves, but they are generally open only at the entrance, and must be at once cold and close. And what is to be done with the smoke from the fire? And people who would live in caves would probably let the refuse from their food lie in corners, and injure the air they breathe. These caves, however, appear such a natural dwelling-place, that men bestowed much skill and art upon them before devising better abodes. In several eastern countries there are wonderful remains of dwellings in the rocks, excavated into many apartments within, and sculptured without into a state of high ornament. There are temples of pagan gods hollowed out of the heart of mountains; a sort of cathedrals cut out, instead of built up; and ranges of tombs; and, in one place of Arabia, a large theatre is excavated out of the solid rock. The place may serve well for tombs, but it is apparently impossible to make such dwellings airy enough for hunian health. Roving people, who cannot depend on finding rock dwellings wherever they please to go, carry their abodes about with them. Such were Abraham and Lot of old, seeking green pastures for their flocks, and wanting to move when the herbage was eaten down: such are the Arabs of our day who encamp beside the water-springs, and the Red Indians who pursue the buffalo herds; and the gypsies among the plains of southern France, or the dark forests of Germany, or the green lanes of England. A tent cannot be easily divided into apartments, nor stand much stress of weather; and the disposal of refuse is so troublesome HUMAN HABITATIONS. that it is usually permitted to accumulate till the tent of the Arab and the wigwam of the Indian becomes unbearable, is taken up, and carried away, to be fixed in some fresh spot. It is a great advance when men build up dwellings; because, however bad the first may be, this is a kind of abode which admits of improvement to the last degree that we are able to imagine. In America at the present time, for instance, every kind of erected house may be seen, from the worst to the best; and the most perfect abode yet conceived of is a built house. A poor settler in the woods, wanting a temporary shelter for his family, drives a few stakes into the ground, and wattles between them, and lays on a roof of boughs, under which they may sleep till their log-house is ready. If he is careless, or ignorant, or extremely poor, or without help, he will do his work badly. His logs will be so rough as not to lie close, but let in the driving rain and the wintry wind, though he tries to stuff the holes with moss or clay. He will be apt to make his roof too nearly flat, so that the snow will lie too long, and soak through. He will lay his floor upon the ground, thus having no drain, and no space for air to pass under the floor. He will build it probably on some level spot, where he has just cut down trees to make room; and water always collects and stagnates where a small clearing is made in a forest; and then fever and ague are sure to arise. Such is a bad log-house. But a good log-house is as wholesome an abode as any we yet know of. The best kind of log-house will be built upon a rising ground, and be itself so raised from the soil as to allow a free passage of air under the whole of it. Its walls and roof will be made tight, and well plastered within; and this being properly done, no dwelling is at once so cool in summer and so warm in winter as a log-house. Its windows will be large and numerous enough to admit plenty of sunshine and air. Its chimneys will be straight, and safe from danger of fire; and provision will be made for the removal of all that is unclean. Such a log-house I have lived in; and I could not desire a more wholesome abode. There remains, however, much trouble in carrying water and other things in and out, in lighting and warming it, and in performing many domestic offices which in the towns can be made less expensive and laborious by a junction of means, and a higher knowledge of building arrangements. In towns men are finding how that while separate abodes may have the air circulating through and through them, there may be, at a great saving in every way, an abundant supply of warmth, light, and systematic drainage, so as to make human dwellings as perfect, in regard to health and convenience, as we at present know how to make them. It is curious that all the kinds of dwellings that I have mentioned may be found in England at the present time. A Brighton paper says " In the cliffs on the other side of Hastings an Irishman has made himself about as romantic a dwelling place as it is possible to conceive. The cliffs here are rather more than 100 feet above the sea. Rather more than half way up, there is a small ledge, below which it is perpendicular; but it is accessible by a side path. Above, the cliffs again rise perpendicularly. It is this ledge which the Irishman chose for his habitation. Scooping out the sand in the face of the cliff, he made an arched cell, where he lives with his wife and an adopted child-a crippled, but very intelligent boy. The man gains a livelihood by breeding rabbits, squirrels, &c." Next we read of the Duke of Buccleuch's new cottages for agricultural labourers, roomy, clean, and convenient; and everywhere of the steps taken to prove that people may be lodged in wholesome and comfortable dwellings as cheaply as in the worst. Between an abode where health and decency are properly provided for to a royal palace, the difference is less (not being an essen HUMAN HABITATIONS. tial oné) than between a cellar and the humblest cottage which has air, light, good drainage, and sepa rate rooms. With the improvement in human dwellings, new considerations arise. One of the most striking is the liability to fires. A cave cannot catch fire; and if a tent does, the mischief stops at a single dwelling. But when we begin with erected houses-houses built in clusters, for economy of drainage, &c., we become liable to the danger of fire. What ravages from fire have we known during the last dozen years!—the Houses of Parliament; the Exchange; the two great New York fires, after which acres of ground were seen covered with smoking ruins; the Quebec and St. John's fires; the many at Liverpool; that at Soham, and the late spread of fires in France;-what a list it is! What dreadful loss! what danger and calamity! In some few cases, the evil is almost turned into good by the removal of foul abodes, as in the burning of the lower part of the town in the Quebec fire; but how many new dwellings and warehouses have suffered also! With the modern state of things arises the new duty of care against fire such as was never thought of in less civilised times. It has become a matter of serious social duty to have our chimneys regularly swept, to permit no carrying of fire from room to room, and especially of wood ashes; and to see that the houses we inhabit are so built as to have no beams any where exposed to great heat. It is believed that the frequency of fires in America is owing to the hasty building of the houses, whereby cracks are occasioned, and beams become exposed; and to the practice of carrying wood ashes uncovered from room to roomthere being no saying when the fire is out in wood People's Journal. ashes. F.-Are you the bird I lately saw Picking among the frozen straw B.-Why, Master, all our race is black, I oft was pecking near your stack, F. But now the winter's passed away, Why come you not from day to day B.-I haste me to the woods retreat, My fellow-songsters there to meet, F. But why not warble out your lay Near which you came in winter-day, B. The earliest notes my minstrel yield, Then join the laughing woods and fields, F. A thousand thanks thou grateful bird, Although the artless tale I've heard, Has chided me. For had I been as anxious too, My God to praise ; I'd risen too, and sung with you, My nobler lays. Guernsey. . S. SPURGEON. |