black coal which now forms the bed of the
grate. As the fire burns down, lift up the
bottom of the box by the application of the
poker to certain holes or catches in the
piston, and you will enjoy a clear, bright,
smokeless fire until the bottom is pushed up
into the fire, to denote that the box is empty;
which, in well-regulated families, will not
happen until bed-time. When you want to
put the fire out, remove most of the red-hot
lumps; for, by this improvement, the smallest
coal cakes into lumps. When you don't
want to put it out, and to keep it gently
alive all night, do nothing. Even after
nearly all the coal which is surrounded by
the fire bars has been consumed, the air will
dive into the coal-box and keep the fire there
gently alight—like a torch burning from the
top downwards—until almost all the fuel is
consumed, and thus the fire will remain burning
for a whole day or night, without stirring or
attendance, yet it is ready to burn up actively
at any moment when the piston is raised.
The fire never need be let out all the winter,
and that with a considerable economy of
fuel.

It will be perceived that no air can pass
through the fire from the bed of the grate—
a defect as respects draught, but a merit in
preventing the body of coal in the reservoir
from igniting before it reaches above the lower
bar. The defect is converted into a merit,
in the chimney, which is gradually
contracted and fitted with a throstle-valve
having an index outside, by which the size
of the orifice inside can be regulated so as to
increase or diminish the draught. Any grate
can be fitted with Dr. Arnott's expedients
for from twenty-five to thirty shillings, and
any person who may have the good sense to
wish to adopt them, had better procure the
Journal of the Society of Arts for the twelfth
of May last, and read a report of the full,
clear and easily understood explanations,
which Dr. Arnott publicly and most liberally
gave at a meeting of the Society, without
reserving to himself any sort of patent right
or advantage whatever.

Mr. Julius Jeffries, another leader of the
legions of smoke-haters, has made a
proposition, which must be mentioned. He
says, remove all the gas-factories to a distance
from London, bring up the carburetted
hydrogen in pipes, and use it to heat coke in
your grates. That is to say, take your lumps
of coal to the gasometer; extract the gas
(which send travelling per pipes), send it up
to London in the form of coke, and then burn
the two together, to make a cheerful fire.
Dr. Aruott and Mr. Jeffries differ only
in this: the former manufactures his coke
and cheerful fire all at once on the premises,
while Mr. Jeffries puts his combustibles out
to make.

There is no reason whatever why the
atmosphere of London, and other great towns,
should not be as clear, the public buildings
as white, and the linen a great deal cleaner
than the air, the monuments, and the linen of
Paris, or Munich, or St. Petersburg.

TATTYBOYS RENTERS.

THAT gregarious tendency common to men,
as well as to the inferior orders of animation,
that leads the devouring lion to howl in
company with the Leo vorans, minnows to
flow together into the net of the snarer,
herrings to be taken in shoals of thousands,
blacklegs to horde with blacklegs, lords with
lords, children with children, birds of a
feather, in fact, human as well as ornithological,
to flock together has—brought a considerable
number of eccentric parties together
in Tattyboys Bents. For the Rents being
decidedly eccentric of themselves as Rents, it
was but natural and to be expected that at
least one party of eccentric character should,
in the first instance, come to reside in them.
After this it was not of course surprising,
carrying out the birds-of-a-feather theory,
that other eccentric parties should come and
join party number one; and the glorious and
yet natural result has been, that we possess
in Tattyboys Rents perhaps as queer a lot of
parties as you could find (though we are
perfectly solvent) out of Queer Street.

I strove so hard, remis atque velis, in the
first instance, to give you as sufficient an idea
of the Rents, architecturally speaking, that I
had little space to dilate on the characteristics
of the inhabitants. You might have
been able to discern something like
eccentricity in Miss Tattyboys, but I cannot bring
her forward with anything like certainty as a
character: she is so unsubstantial, so mythic.
As it has been often and bitterly complained
of by her tenants—you don't know where to
have her. But the Rents can boast other
characters about whom there is no mistake,
who stand out in bold and well-defined relief,
and who, whether tradesmen or dealing at
one another's shops, are emphatically rum
customers. Will you allow me to introduce
vou to a few? You will? Mumchance, stand
forth!

Right up at the further end of the Rents,
where the thoroughfare is blockaded by the
high frowning walls of Smelt and Pigg's
foundry, dwells, in a house—one of the
dingiest, shabbiest, queerest houses in Tattyboys
Rents—P. R. Mumchance. Would you know
for what stand the initials P. R. For Peter
Robert, haply? For Peregrine Reuben, or
Pietro Rolando, or Paul Ralph? Not at all.
Mumchance's father (commonly known as Old
Nutcrackers, from the strong development
of his facial muscles) was a great admirer—
some say friend and creditor—of that virtuous,
illustrious, and magnanimous prince, the
penultimate possessor of the British throne;
and young Mumchance, now of that ilk,
being born about the year eighteen hundred
and eleven, was christened, in a moment