Such then being the stove, and such the fuel, let us now advert to one or two of the peculiarities which this remarkable apparatus exhibits. It has been justly eulogized on the score of its surprising economy. None of its caloric, we may say, is wasted: the whole is expended in warming the frame, from its innermost recesses to the tips of the fingers and the extremities of the toes. To maintain the temperature of any apartment at 98° for threescore years and ten would involve a bill of some little severity at the coal merchant's. But the quantity of combustible matter actually consumed upon our human premises is comparatively small. From ten to fifteen ounces of carbon are daily expelled from the lungs, or discharged through the skin, of an adult whose stove is in full practice. The hydrogen and other trifles should also be taken into account in our budget of fuel; but as the total quantity of oxygen inhaled in a year was computed by Lavoisier at 700 or 800 pounds only, and as all chemical combinations are effected in in definite proportions, the maximum amount of combustibles employed may be ascertained with some approach to truth.* To express the results numerically, it has been said that the caloric produced in a year would raise twenty or twenty-five thousand pounds of water from the freezing to the boiling point. But perhaps a more vivid conception may be obtained by considering that the difference between the heat of the human interior and the average heat of a latitude like ours, represents the whole difference between summer and winter. If the surplus warmth of the inhabitants of this kingdom-that which we possess over and above what the climate itself affords-could be collected, it would fuse great masses of iron, or burn a town to tinder.

The case is still more remarkable in regard to the occupants of the Polar wastes. If the corporeal caloric of these barbarians could be communicated to their atmosphere, so as to impregnate

mammifers may be quoted at 100°, though considerable differences exist. In the heart of a lamb the thermometer rose to 107°. In contradistinction to mammals and birds, reptiles and fishes have been designated "cold blooded;" but this assertion is somewhat calumnious: for though their heat varies with the medium in which they exist, their temperature is generally a few degrees higher. Even insects, crustacea, molluscs, and other invertebrate "small deer," down to the most insignificant polyp, appear to take out a license to distill caloric on their own premises. Further, certain plants, whilst absorbing oxygen and making carbonic acid, as in the process of inflorescence, become much warmer than the surrounding air; whilst the temperature of the latter was only 66°, an Arum cordifolium has been known to range from 111° to 128°.

Lavoisier's estimate is certainly low. To saturate 800 lbs. of oxygen with carbon alone, 300 lbs. of the latter would be required. This would scarcely admit of a pulmonary discharge of 10 ozs. of charcoal a day, were the whole oxygen employed in producing carbonic acid, and the cutaneous respiration thrown out of consideration.

the region with the same temperature, the aspect of the locality would be completely changed. An Arctic landscape would be a scene where tropical fruits might flourish in the open air, where palms might rear their slender stems and banyans spread their awful shade, where tigers might lurk in the thickets and boas lie coiled in the treacherous foliage above, and where the waters might be employed in fanning these British conquerors with punkahs, or carrying them in palanquins on a trip to the Magnetic Pole.

But perhaps the most striking feature in this warmth-producing apparatus, is the self-regulating power which it possesses. The fires on our domestic hearths decline at one moment and augment at another. Sometimes the mistress of the house threatens to faint on account of excessive heat: sometimes the master endeavours to improve the temperature by a passionate use of the poker, with an obligato accompaniment of growls respecting the excessive cold. Were such irregularities to prevail unchecked in our fleshy stoves, we should suffer considerable annoyance. After a meal of very inflammatory materials, or an hour spent in extraordinary exertion, the gush of caloric might throw the system into a state of high fever. How is this prevented? In some of our artificial stoves little doors or slides are employed to control the admission of air: in furnaces connected with steam engines, we may have dampers which will accomplish the same purpose by the ingenious manipulations of the machine itself. But neither doors nor dampers, pokers nor stokers, can be employed in the bodily apparatus. If, on the one hand, our human fires should begin to flag from undue expenditure of heat, the appetite speaks out sharply, and compels the owner to look round for fuel. Hunger rings the bell, and orders up coals in the shape of savoury meats. Even rags and insufficient clothing contribute to make a man voracious. Or should the summons be neglected, the garnered fat, as we have seen, is thrown into the grate to keep the furnace in play. If, on the other hand, the heat internally developed or externally applied should become unreasonably intense, a very cunning process of reduction is adopted. When a substance grows too hot, the simplest method of bringing it into a cooler frame is to sprinkle it with water, the conversion of the fluid into vapour involving the consumption of a large amount of calorie. This is precisely what occurs in our human organisms. But, doubtless, when we mention the word perspiration, the reader, still more deeply disgusted, will tell us that this is an extremely uncouth topic, and that we ought to blush for referring to such a coarse, ill-bred operation. Not in the least! On the contrary, we venture to submit that perspiration is an exceedingly philoso

phical process. Instead of thinking slightly of a person who may happen to be in that condition, we ought to esteem him as one who is in a highly scientific state of body. For no sooner does the temperature of the frame rise above its standard height, than the sudorific glands, indignant at the event, begin to give out their fluid sensibly, so as to bathe the surface of the flesh. Each little perspiratory pipe (and there are supposed to be six or seven millions of pores with twenty-eight miles of glandular tubing attached) discharges its stream of moisture as if it were the hose of a fire-engine, so that the skin is speedily sluiced, and further incendiary proceedings are arrested. Whenever, therefore, a man becomes overheated by working, running, rowing, fighting, making furious speeches at the hustings, or other violent exertions, he invariably resorts to this species of exudation, and his friends begin to be alarmed lest he should fairly deliquesce.

Hence too arises the singular power of bearing for a time a temperature which would parch the body into mummy were it divested of life. Bakers will venture into ovens where the heat is considerably above the boiling point. Chantrey, the sculptor, entered a drying kiln where the thermometer indicated 350°. Chabert, the fire-king, plunged into an atmosphere which ranged from 400° to 500°. Conjurors, like the old Spanish Saludores, the Italian Lionetti, the English Richardsons and Powells, have earned a daring livelihood by their salamandrine feats; and though in these cases impunity was generally secured by artificial preparations, yet we know that some of their marvels, such as dipping the finger into molten lead, may be accomplished with safety by any one who chooses to try the experiment.

Drs. Blagdon and Fordyce remained for some time in an apartment where the glow of the air sufficed to roast eggs and dress steaks-drying the latter indeed so as to put them out of the pale of mastication; yet the blood in their veins was not put on the simmer. You would have expected them to suffer like Master Phaëton, when "nec tantos sustinet æstus; ferventesque auras velut e fornace profundâ, ore trahit." But no, their breath chilled their nostrils in the act of expiration: it sank the mercury in the thermometer several degrees; it cooled their fingers if directed upon them; and this it did, though the atmosphere around them acted like a sirocco when set in motion; and though a fan, instead of producing a pleasant breeze, would have compelled the strongest-minded lady to faint, however determined her nerves. What protected these fire-proof men? Simply, their sudorific glands. The sweat poured down their frames, and if any of our dainty friends had stood in their places, they would doubtless have been ashamed of the pools of perspiration which were formed on the floor.

What shall we say then, good reader? Speaking seriously, and looking at the question from a mere human point of view, could any project appear more hopeless, than one for burning fuel in a soft delicate fabric like the human body-a fabric composed for the most part of mere fluids—a fabric which might be easily scorched by excess of heat or damaged by excess of cold? Does it not seem like a touch of Quixotism in Nature, to design a stove with flesh for its walls, veins for its flues, skin for its covering? Yet here, we have seen, is an apparatus, which, as if by magic, produces a steady stream of heat-not trickling penuriously from its fountains, but flowing on day and night, winter and summer, without a moment's cessation from January to December. Carry this splendid machine to the coldest regions on the globe-set it up in a scene where the frosts are so crushing that nature seems to be trampled dead-still it pours out its mysterious supplies with unabated profusion. It is an apparatus, too, which does its work unwatched, and in a great measure unaided. The very fuel which is thrown into it in random heaps is internally sifted and sorted, so that the true combustible elements are conveyed to their place and applied to their duty with unerring precision. No hand is needed to trim its fires, to temper its glow, to remove its ashes. Smoke there is none, spark there is none, flame there is none. The pulmonary chimney is never clogged with human grime. All is so delicately managed that the fairest skin is neither shrivelled nor blackened by the burnings within. Is this apparatus placed in circumstances which rob it too fast of its caloric? Then the appetite becomes clamorous for food, and in satisfying its demands the fleshy stove is silently replenished. Or, are we placed in peril from superabundant warmth? Then the tiny floodgates of perspiration are flung open, and the surface is laid under water until the fires within are reduced to their wonted level. Assailed on the one hand by heat, the body resists the attack, if resistance be possible, until the store of moisture is dissipated: assailed on the other by cold, it keeps the enemy at bay until the hoarded stock of fuel is expended. Thus protected, thus provisioned, let us ask whether these human hearths are not entitled to rank amongst the standing marvels of creation? for is it not startling to find that, let the climate be mild or rigorous, let the wind blow from the sultry desert or come loaded with polar sleet, let the fluctuations of temperature be as violent as they may without us, there shall still be a calm, unchanging, undying summer within us?

V.

A GOSSIP ABOUT EDINBURGH.

A PERFECT library of books has been written about Edinburgh. Defoe, in his own matter-of-fact, garrulous way, has described the city. The follies of its society are reflected in the inimitable pages of "Humphrey Clinker." Certain aspects of city life, city amusement, city dissipation, are mirrored in the clear, albeit somewhat shallow, stream of Ferguson's humour. The old life of the place, its citizens rejoicing in cocked hats and powdered hair, immense paunches and double chins, and no end of knowing wrinkles in the worldly-wise faces of them, and hints of latent humour, striking gold-headed canes on every pavement-are to be seen in "Kayes' Portraits" by the dozen. Passing Scott's services to the city-the magnificent description in "Marmion," the broils of the nobles in "The Abbot," the "high peaks" in "Guy Mannering -he has, in "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," made immortal many of the city localities; and the central character of Jennie Deans is so unassumingly and sweetly "Scotch," that she seems as much a part of the city as Holyrood, the Castle, or the Crags. In Lockhart's "Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk," we have brilliant sketches of society nearer our own time, when the "Edinburgh Review" flourished, when the city was really the Modern Athens and a seat of criticism giving laws to the empire. In these pages we are introduced to Jeffrey and Craig Crook; John Wilson, in his fervid and glorious youth, the Ettrick Shepherd, and Dr. Chalmers. Then came "Blackwood's Magazine," the "Chaldee Manuscript, the "Noctes," and "Margaret Lindsay." Then the "Traditions of Edinburgh," by Mr. Robert Chambers; then, after, the celebrated "Einburgh Journal." Since that time we have had Lord Cockburn's delightful and chatty "Memorials" of his time. the other day, Dean Ramsay's Two Lectures, full of pleasant antiquarianism, and notices of the men and women who flourished half a century ago. And the list may be closed with "Edinburgh Dissected," written after the fashion of Lockhart's "Letters "-a book containing pleasant enough reading, although it wants the brilliance, the acuteness, and the eloquence, and possesses all the ill-nature of its famous prototype.

But

Scott has certainly done more for Edinburgh than all its great men put together. Burns has hardly left a trace of himself in the northern capital. During his residence there, his spirit was soured, and he was taught to drink whisky-punch-obligations he repaid by addressing "Edina, Scotia's darling seat," in a copy of his