ventilators keep the air fresh and pure; and I consider the presence of
one of these ventilators in a room more valuable than three or four feet
additional height of ceiling. I have found, too, that their working
proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact:--You would suppose
that, as the ventilator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be
blown down through it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is
just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised,
so as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments
keep itself permanently open; proving thereby that there is an up-draught
of heated air continually escaping from the ceiling up the chimney.
Another very simple method of ventilation is employed in those excellent
cottages which Her Majesty has built for her labourers round Windsor.
Over each door a sheet of perforated zinc, some 18 inches square, is
fixed; allowing the foul air to escape into the passage; and in the
ceiling of the passage a similar sheet of zinc, allowing it to escape
into the roof. Fresh air, meanwhile, should be obtained from outside, by
piercing the windows, or otherwise. And here let me give one hint to all
builders of houses. If possible, let bedroom windows open at the top as
well as at the bottom.

Let me impress the necessity of using some such contrivances, not only on
parents and educators, but on those who employ work-people, and above all
on those who employ young women in shops or in work-rooms. What their
condition may be in this city I know not; but most painful it has been to
me in other places, when passing through warehouses or work-rooms, to see
the pale, sodden, and, as the French would say "etiolated" countenances
of the girls who were passing the greater part of the day in them; and
painful, also, to breathe an atmosphere of which habit had, alas! made
them unconscious, but which to one coming out of the open air was
altogether noxious, and shocking also; for it was fostering the seeds of