but very pernicious, all complicated and expensive grates should be laid aside, and such as more simple substituted in the room of them. -- And in the choice of a grate, as in every thing else, beauty and elegance may easily be united with the most perfect simplicity. -- Indeed they are incompatible with every thing else.

In placing the grate, the thing principally to be attended to is, to make the back of it coincide with the back of the Fire-place; -- but as many of the grates now in common use will be found to be too large, when the Fire-places are altered and improved, it will be necessary to diminish their capacities by filling them up at the back and the sides with pieces of fire-stone. When this is done, it is the front of the flat piece of fire-stone which is made to form a new back to the grate, which must be made to coincide with, and make part of the back, of the Fire-place. -- But in diminishing the capacities of grates with pieces of fire-stone, care must be taken not to make them too narrow.

The proper width for grates destined for rooms of a middling size will be from six to eight inches, and their length may be diminished more or less, according as the room is heated with more or less difficulty, or as the weather is more or less severe. -- But where the width of a grate is not more than five inches, it will be very difficult to prevent the fire from going out.

It goes out for the same reason that a live coal from the grate that falls upon the hearth soon ceases to be red hot; -- it is cooled by the surrounding cold air of the atmosphere. -- The knowledge of the cause which produces this effect is important, as it indicates the means which may be used for preventing it. -- But of this subject I shall treat more fully hereafter.

It frequently happens that the iron backs of grates are not vertical, or upright, but inclined backwards. -- When these grates are so much too wide as to render it necessary to fill them up behind with fire-stone, the inclination of the back will be of little consequence; for by making the piece of stone with which the width of the grate is to be diminished in the form of a wedge, or thicker above than below, the front of this stone, which in effect will become the back of the grate, may be made perfectly vertical; and the iron back of the grate being hid in the solid work of the back of the Fire-place, will produce no effect whatever; but if the grate be already so narrow as not to admit of any diminution of its width, in that case it will be best to take away the iron back of the grate entirely, and fixing the grate firmly in the brick- work, cause the back of the Fire-place to serve as a back to the grate. -- This I have very frequently done, and have always found it to answer perfectly well.

Where it is necessary that the fire in a grate should be very small, it will be best, in reducing the grate with fire-stone, to bring its cavity, destined for containing the fuel, to the form of one half of a hollow hemisphere; the two semicircular openings being one above, to receive the coals, and the other in front, or towards the bars of the grate; for when the coals are burnt in such a confined space, and surrounded on all sides, except in the front and above, by fire-stone, (a substance peculiarly well adapted for confining heat,) the heat of the fire will be concentrated, and the cold air of the atmosphere being kept at a distance, a much smaller quantity of coals will burn, than could possibly be made to burn in a grate where they would be more exposed to be cooled by the surrounding air, or to have their heat carried off by being in contact with iron, or with any other substance through which heat passes with greater facility than through fire-stone.

Being persuaded that if the improvements in Chimney Fire-places here recommended should be generally adopted, (which I cannot help flattering myself will be the case,) that it will become necessary to reduce, very considerably, the sizes of grates, I was desirous of showing how this may, with the greatest safety and facility, be done.

Where grates, which are designed for rooms of a middling size, are longer than 14 or 15 inches, it will always be best, not merely to diminish their lengths, by filling them up at their two ends with fire-stone, but, forming the back of the Chimney of a proper width, without paying any regard to the length of the