HAVING NOW made a sufficient provision of materials for any improvement in building that human art may suggest, I shall conclude my subject by a slight sketch of those successive steps in contrivance, which have advanced the simple hut or cottage to the comfortable dwelling-house, suited to the occasions of civilised life. The utility of dividing the space enclosed within the walls into several apartments appropriated to different uses, would very soon become apparent. Of this degree of contrivance several quadrupeds have given an example, who, in their subterraneous habitations, form distinct chambers for lodging in, and for repositories of their various stores of provisions. By means, therefore, of inside walls U or partitions of boards, men would separate their sleeping-room, their cooking-room or kitchen, and their store-room, and these they would fit up differently, making the bedchamber warm and snug, perhaps with matting hung round it; the kitchen, well protected from the danger of fire; and leaving the store-room in a rough, unfinished state. In the northern, or temperate climates, the floor would often be uncomfortably cold and damp, especially before it was the practice to dig a cellar beneath it; and it is curious to observe the various devices which men have been put upon in different countries for the remedy of this inconvenience. Wandering tribes dwelling under tents, accustomed, for want of seats, to squat on the ground, which is the general practice of such races, and indeed of most of the orientals to the present day, could find no better expedient than to spread the floor with skins, fleeces, rugs, or cushions. The "monarch of a shed," on the contrary, was able to adopt the better expedients of raising his floor somewhat above the level of the earth, hardening it, either with beaten clay, or a pavement of stones, or boards; and supporting his own person above it on a seat. Thus, as the poet tells us, "First, Necessity invented stools, The erect carriage, and alert and active habits of Europeans, and the slouching and indolent ones of Asiatics, are more dependent than would at first be supposed, on their respective habits of sitting on their heels and lolling on cushions, or placing themselves erect on a bench, or chair, with a table before them. By the art of the carpenter in squaring timber, dividing it into thin boards, smoothing it, fastening pieces together by mortises and dovetails, and other devices for fashioning it to all sorts of purposes, its usefulness as a material were exceedingly increased, and numberless conveniences were produced by its means which the wild inhabitant of the woods could never have thought of. The great evil of a smoky house would soon put the inhabitant upon devising some better method of carrying off the smoke than through a mere hole in his roof. He would remove his fire-place from the middle of the room to one of the outside walls; and having enclosed it at the sides with stone or brick, he would continue the structure up to the top of the house, forming it at a certain distance from the ground into a sort of tube or funnel, through which the smoke might be conveyed away clear from the building. Thus he would have an open fire-place below, for warming himself and cooking, terminating in a chimney above. This excellent invention, which contributes more than almost any other circumstance to the comfort of a house, would probably cost many trials before it was brought to perfection. In fact, a writer of the time of Queen Elizabeth tells us, that one of the things in which old men noted an advance of luxury in their time, was the multitude of chimneys lately erected. their young days there were not above two or three, if so many, in most uplandish towns of the realm (the religious houses and manor places of their lords always excepted, and peradventure some great personage), but each made his fire against a reredosse in the hall, where he dined and dressed his meat. There In is reason, indeed, to believe that the ancients, even after they had acquired great skill in most parts of architecture, were little acquainted with the construction of chimneys, which would of course be most studied in the colder climates. In the greater part of these, the stove is preferred to the open fire for warming rooms. This consists of a kind of oven, heated from the outside, and projecting into a room, to which it communicates through its body an equable warmth to the whole apartment, but accompanied by a closeness extremely oppressive to those accustomed to The admission of air and light would soon, even in the hut, be effected rather by aperture in the walls, than by the open door. These would be provided with shutters or lattices, to close occasionally against the wind and rain, and during the night. But it might long exercise the invention how to contrive a method of lighting an apartment, while at the same time it was sheltered from the inclemencies of the weather. Some semi-transparent substance stretched over the windowframe would be thought of for this purpose; |