On Church Architecture.—After explaining
that the church architecture, then coming into
fashion, is unsuited to our climate, he
continues:—"I never entered the Abbey Church
at Bath but once, and the moment I stepped
over the threshold, I found myself chilled to
the very marrow of my bones. When we
consider that in our churches, in general, we
breathe a gross stagnated air, surcharged
with damps from vaults, tombs, and charnel-
houses, may we not term them so many
magazines of rheums, created for the benefit
of the medical faculty; and safely aver that
more bodies are lost, than souls saved, by
going to church, in the winter especially,
which may be said to engross nine months
out of the year? I should be glad to know
what offence it would give to tender
consciences, if the House of God was made more
comfortable, or less dangerous to the health
of valetudinarians; and whether it would not
be an encouragement to piety, as well as the
salvation of many lives, if the place of
worship was well floored, wainscotted, warmed,
and ventilated, and its area kept sacred from
the pollution of the dead? The practice of
burying in churches was the effect of ignorant
superstition, influenced by knavish priests
who pretended that the devil could have no
power over the defunct, if he was interred in
holy ground; and this, indeed, is the only
reason that can be given at the present
day."

On Military Promotion.—"He (Lieutenant
Lismahago) had been wounded, maimed,
mutilated, taken, and enslaved, without ever
having attained a higher rank than that of
lieutenant. 'I (says the lieutenant) purchased
an ensigncy thirty years ago; and, in the
course of service, rose to be a lieutenant
according to my seniority. I had no money to
carry to market, &c.'"

There would be no difficulty in continuing
the catalogue indefinitely. If we open any
other book of the same period, we shall find
the same remarkable harvest of hoary abuses.
See only, as examples, the language in which
Roderick Random speaks of the improper
treatment of surgeons in the navy, and the
want of respect shown to them, or consideration
for their improvement in their
profession. See all that was said and written for
centuries about our iniquitous law of debtor
and creditor, so short a time defunct.
Rummage up any heap of old books, and peep
into them, any wet day that you have time,
and you will find them full of angry or jocular
tirades against pluralists and simony; against
the miserably small incomes of the working
clergy; against the abuses of universities
and of charitable institutions; against the
High Court of Chancery; against bribery
and corruption in Parliament, and at
elections; and against all that very self-
same class of evils, which are still too
faithfully presented to us, as not now even
partially amended, in the works of modern
authors who write with a purpose beyond
mere story-telling.

OUR OWN TEMPERATURE.

DR. JOHN DAVY, Inspector-General of Army
Hospitals, has read two papers before the
Royal Society, one in 1845, and one last year,
upon the temperature of man. His first
experiments were on himself, a healthy man
of fifty-five, in England. The mode of
ascertaining the heat of the substance of the body
was by thrusting the bulb of a delicate
thermometer, constructed for the purpose, far
back under the tongue, and holding it for
some time in the centre of the closed mouth.
The average temperature of the body in a
healthy man of fifty-five, was found to be
ninety-eight degrees and four-tenths of a
degree. This temperature, however, is
perpetually rising or falling, within the limits
of about one degree on either side. On
getting up in the morning in this country,
the temperature of the body is above the
average; because it has been, all night, under
thick bed-clothes, by which radiation was
impeded. It cools down to the average, and
before bed-time—even in winter parlours,
of which the heat has been augmenting every
hour—the temperature of the body is as much
below the average as it had been above it in
the morning.

All thin is the case in England; but Dr.
Davy went between the tropics, and
experimented on himself while he resided at
Barbadoes. There the rule was reversed.
He slept with only a sheet to cover him, and
with his bed-room windows open. While he
slept, his body cooled, and its temperature
was therefore lower than the average on
rising, and above the average at bed-time.
The whole difference made also in the
temperature of the body by transfer from an
English to a West Indian climate, was to
raise its average by about one degree. The
difference between the heat of the substance
of the body in England and the tropics may
be summed up therefore very shortly. The
body in England is coolest at bed-time, in
the tropics it is coolest in the morning,
and the average heat of the body in the
tropics is higher by one degree than it is in
England.

This difference the air makes: there are
also differences made by our mode of taking
air and by some other habits, which produce
the same effects all over the world. Active
exercise raises the heat of the body, but at
the utmost does not raise it above one degree.
The heat at the surface and about the hands
and feet, together with the perspiration, do
not indicate in themselves that the whole
body is hotter: they occur because the
increased action of the heart propels the
blood more forcibly towards the surface, and
urges towards the skin the heat which collects,