The weather has been beautiful ever since last Thursday morning; but there has been a white frost every morning, and the days have been coldish. _Here_, however, I am quite at home in a room, where there is one of my _American Fire Places_, bought, by my host, of Mr. Judson of Kensington, who has made many a score of families comfortable, instead of sitting shivering in the cold. At the house of the gentleman, whose house I am now in, there is a good deal of _fuel-wood_; and here I see in the parlours, those fine and cheerful fires that make a great part of the happiness of the Americans. But these fires are to be had only in this sort of fire-place. Ten times the fuel; nay, no quantity, would effect the same object, in any other fire-place. It is equally good for coal as for wood; but, for _pleasure_, a wood-fire is the thing. There is, round about almost every gentleman's or great farmer's house, more wood suffered to rot every year, in one shape or another, than would make (with this fire-place) a couple of rooms constantly warm, from October to June. _Here_, peat, turf, saw-dust, and wood, are burnt in these fire-places. My present host has three of the fire-places. Being out a-coursing to-day, I saw a queer-looking building upon one of the thousands of hills that nature has tossed up in endless variety of form round the skirts of the lofty Hindhead. This building is, it seems, called a _Semaphore_, or _Semiphare_, or something of that sort. What this word may have been hatched out of I cannot say; but it means _a job_, I am sure. To call it an _alarm-post_ would not have been so convenient; for people not endued with Scotch _intellect_ might have wondered why the devil we should have to pay for alarm-posts; and might have thought, that, with all our "glorious victories," we had "brought our hogs to a fine market," if our dread of the enemy were such as to induce us to have alarm-posts all over the country! Such unintellectual people might have thought that we had "conquered France by the immortal Wellington," to little purpose, if we were still in such fear as to build alarm-posts; and they might, in addition, have observed, that, for many hundred of years, England stood in need of neither signal posts nor standing army of mercenaries; but relied safely on the courage and public spirit of the people themselves. By calling the thing by an outlandish name, these reflections amongst the unintellectual are obviated. _Alarm-post_ would be a nasty name; and it would puzzle people exceedingly, when they saw one of these at a place like Ashe, a little village on the north side of the chalk-ridge (called the Hog's Back) going from Guildford to Farnham. What can this be _for_? Why are these expensive things put up all over the country? Respecting the movements of _whom_ is wanted this _alarm-system_? Will no member ask this in Parliament? Not one: not a man: and yet it is a thing to ask about. Ah!