to a great English philosopher of the same name, proposed to line every room with plates of metal, and lord Stanhope invented a kind of mortar for the same purpose. Both methods have been tried with complete success; but they will never be adopted unless a law be passed to compel the adoption. For houses in London, and indeed in all large towns, are built for sale, and the builder will not incur the expense of making them fire proof, because, if they are burnt, he is not the person who is to be burnt in them. And if he who builds for himself in the country, were disposed to avail himself of these inventions, should he have heard of them, the difficulty of instructing labourers in the use of any thing which they have not been used to, is such, that rather than attempt it, he submits to the same hazard as his neighbours.

You would suppose, however, that there could be no objection to the use of any

means for extinguishing fires. Balls for this purpose were invented by Mr. Godfrey, son to the inventor of a famous quackmedicine; but the son's fire-balls did not succeed so well as the father's cordial.Succeed, indeed, they did in effecting what was intended; for, when one of them was thrown into a room which had been filled with combustibles and set on fire for the purpose of experiment, it cxploded, and instantly quenched it.

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But there was an objection to the use of these balls which Mr. Godfrey had not foreseen. It is a trade in England to put out fires, and the English have a proverb that "All trades must live;" which is so thoroughly admitted by all ranks and degrees, that if the elixir of life were actually to be discovered, the furnishers of funerals would present a petition to parliament, praying that it might be prohibited, in consideration of the injury they must otherwise sustain ; and in all

probability, parliament would permit their plea. The continuance of the slave trade, in consideration of the injury which the dealers in human flesh would sustain by its abolishment, would be a precedent. The firemen made a conspiracy against Godfrey; and when he or any of his friends attended at a fire, and mounted a ladder to throw the balls in, the ladder was always thrown down; so that, as the life of every person who attempted to use them was thus endangered, the thing was given up.

The machine for escaping is a sort of iron basket, or chair, fixed in a groove on the outside of the house. I have never seen one at any other place than at the inventor's warehouse. The poet, Gray, was notoriously fearful of fire, and kept a ladder of ropes in his bed-room. Some mischievous young men at Cambridge knew this, and roused him from below, in the middle of a dark night, with the cry of Fire! The staircase, they said,

was in flames. Up went his window, and down he came by his rope-ladder, as fast as he could go, into a tub of water which they had placed to receive him.

LETTER LXXIII.

Remarks on the English Language.

He who ventures to criticise a foreign language should bear in mind that he is in danger of exposing his own ignorance. "What a vile language is yours!" said a Frenchman to an Englishman;-" you have the same word for three different things! There is ship, un vaisseau; ship (sheep) mouton; and ship (cheap) bon marché."-Now these three words, so happily instanced by Monsieur,are pronounced as differently as they are spelt. As I see his folly, it will be less excusable should I commit the same myself.

The English is rather a hissing than a harsh language, and perhaps this was the