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THE LIGHTING OF MODERN TOWNS.

WALKING in the cheerful gas-lighted streets of a modern town, it is difficult for us to imagine what a gloomy, dismal place, a town of the olden times was, in the dark nights of winter. Two or three hundred years ago, the streets of even London and Paris were utterly unpaved. Heaps of rubbish and cinders encumbered them. All sorts of slops and sewage matter were emptied before the doors or thrown from the windows. Swine wallowed in the deep central gutters, while dogs, kites, and crows, fought for the garbage. The narrow, crooked lanes and alleys, were literally

dung-hills.

A solitary cresset, perhaps, burned in the middle of the street. The cresset was a small fire-pan, or grate, set on a pole. If it burned, it made the darkness visible. If the wind blew at all strong, the cresset flared up and burned itself out. If there was rain, the cresset died away in a sputtering hiss, and gave up its feeble dispute with the reign of darkness.

mas.

A Mayor of London, Sir Henry Barton, so far back as the year 1416, ordered householders to hang out lanterns in front of their houses on the winter evenings betwixt All-hallows and CandleThis custom lasted for three centuries, and was common in London down to the reign of Queen Anne and the days of Pope and Addison. The duty of hanging out a lantern was often evaded by the lazy and the greedy. The watchmen, who paced their rounds with a halbert, a lantern, a bell, and a dog, thundered an exhortation at the doors of the negligent. Ringing his bell, the guardian of the night bawled out—

"Lantern and a whole light!

Hang out your lights! Hear!

No householder was obliged to have out a light later than eleven o'clock. After that hour, therefore, there was no light at all. No house of less than ten pounds rent was required to furnish a lantern. Whole streets were, consequently, without

light altogether, because the inhabitants were not rated at ten pounds.

The watchman had sometimes a musical turn, and delivered his mandates in song:

"A light here, maids! hang out your light,

And see your horns be clean and bright,
That so your candle clear may shine,
Continuing from six till nine,

That honest men that walk along

May see to pass safe without wrong."

The making of lanterns was a great trade in those times. But a lantern then was very unlike the dazzling bull's eye from which the modern policeman flashes out his jet of piercing light. It was a great clumsy thing, with sides of thin horn, through which feebly glimmered a murky gleam of a dirty yellow colour.

Public lanterns were first thought of about two hundred years ago. La Reinie, the first lieutenant-general of the Paris police, introduced them in 1667. This was hailed as a great event, and a medal was struck in honour of it, bearing the motto, "The security and splendour of the city." One lantern in the centre of each street, and one at each end, constituted the security and splendour which so delighted the Parisians of those days! These lanterns were slung over the middle of the street by a rope which passed across from side to side. By means of a pulley, the lantern was lowered to the ground to be lighted, and then hoisted up again. In the terrible times of the French Revolution, the cry of the mob, "To the lantern!" sealed the fate of many an unhappy victim. It was only necessary to lower the lantern, untie it, noose the rope on the neck of the man, and hoist away. Next minute, the mob surrounded a dangling corpse.

Defoe--whom every boy loves because he wrote "Robinson Crusoe," and whom every man that is manly loves for his true-hearted love of liberty--was in many things a century before his time. In 1729 he published a pamphlet, suggesting a plan "by which our streets will be so strongly guarded and so gloriously illu minated, that any part of London will be as safe and pleasant at

midnight as at noonday, and burglary totally impracticable." But twenty years after that, London was so badly watched and lighted, that the Lord Mayor and Aldermen went with a petition to the King, stating that the city was so infested at night by gangs of lawless men, armed with "bludgeons, pistols, cutlasses," and other weapons, that it was dangerous to go out after dusk, While as so many were robbed, wounded, and often murdered. this was the case in the capital, one may imagine how unprotected the provinces remained. This, it must be remembered, was the age of foot-pads and highway-men.

Before the doors of some of the old houses in London there is still to be seen, on each side of the posts of the arched iron lamprail, an extinguisher, shaped like the old post-boy's horn. This was to thrust the torches or flambeaus in, to extinguish them, after the inmates of the house had been lighted home. Link-boys, or torch-bearers, were as common then as street-sweepers are in the present day, and picked up what they could by lighting passengers along the streets. They hovered about the theatres and taverns, or took their stand with their smoky light wherever an open cess-pool or a little lake of mud indicated a locality where gentlemen might endanger their necks or soil their silk stockings. The link-boys bore a rather bad name. They were on friendly terms with the rogues, the cut-purses and the cloaksnatchers. They watched the watchmen, and gave a sign to the house-breakers and foot-pads when the coast was clear. The poet Gay gives an advice to the belated passenger in London

streets :

"Though thou art tempted by the linkman's call,
Yet trust him not along the lonely wall;

In the midway he'll quench the flaming brand,
And share the booty with the pilfering band."

The age of oil-lamps came about 1762. Then we had the lamp-lighter, with his ladder, oil-can, and cotton-wicks, and with tow around his wrist, trimming and cleaning in the day-time, and in the dusk of evening climbing the posts and "lighting up.” Then the bold robbers, who carried pistols, bludgeons, and blun

derbusses, began to quit the cities, and to plunder passengers on the highways—for they "loved darkness rather than light." The discovery of gas, and the application of it for the purpose of lighting our towns and cities by night, no doubt did as much good towards checking street robberies as the organization of the powerful police force.

Tenanting, as we do, a world which is placed as much under the dominion of darkness as of light, without the assistance of artificial light man's labour would always be checked, and his efforts at improvement after sunset rendered, in many instances, useless. Human observation was, therefore, naturally directed, in the earliest ages, to the most enduring means of procuring this great requisite of agreeable and useful existence. Fatty substances, with a wick inserted in their mass, were used instead of the lighted pine or fagot. But with this invention the improvement of artificial light was stationary for ages. It was not even until towards the end of last century that the first clear discovery was made of the present brilliant means of procuring artificial light.

Mr. Murdoch, of Redruth in Cornwall, after many experiments, constructed an apparatus by means of which he lighted the Soho Foundry, Birmingham, with gas in the year 1798. At the short peace with France in 1802, when there was a general illumination, the people of Birmingham saw a wonder--the Soho Works illuminated with gas. From that time forward the new light made rapid progress. Town after town was lighted up with it, till now there is scarcely a considerable village which does not enjoy the boon.

So great are the advantages derived from this brilliant light, that about 200,000 tons of coal are used annually in the preparation of it for London alone; and in the longest night of winter no less than 7,000,000 of cubic feet of gas are consumed in the metropolis.

IRON.

THE splendid colour of gold, its great density, its imperishable nature, and its comparative scarcity, have obtained for it the epithet of precious; although, in point of utility to man, iron has far higher and more numerous claims to such a title.

The innumerable applications of iron in our own day result from the various useful properties of this metal. It can be brought to a fluid state, and made to assume whatever form has been given to the mould designed to receive it; it can be drawn out into bars of any degree of strength, or into wires of any degree of fineness; it can be spread out into plates or sheets; it can be twisted and bent in all directions; it can be made hard or soft, sharp or blunt. Iron may be regarded as the parent of agricul ture, and of the useful arts; for without it the ploughshare could not have rendered the earth fertile. Iron furnishes the scythe and the pruning-hook, as well as the sword and the cannon: it forms the chisel, the needle, and the graver: springs of various kinds, from the spring of a watch to that of a carriage; the chain, the anchor, and the compass,-all owe their origin to this most useful of all the metals. We can scarcely move without meeting with new and surprising proofs of the fact that wo are, indeed, living in the age of iron. We travel on land by iron railroads, drawn by horses of iron; we pass over bridges constructed of iron, and often suspended by iron rods; our steamboats are of iron; our bedsteads, chairs, stools, and ornaments are frequently of iron; clumsy wooden gates are being superseded by light and elegant structures of iron; buildings of all kinds are supported on pillars of iron; and, to crown all, we build dwellinghouses and light-houses of iron, and transport them to the most distant parts of the globe.

Iron is more extensively diffused throughout the crust of the earth than any other metal: and its importance is equal to its abundance; for there is no other substance which possesses so many valuable properties, or is so well adapted to form the in

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