On this account alone any kind of iron stove capable of becoming red-hot should be utterly condemned. If Englishmen did their traveling in North Europe in the winter, their self-conceit respecting the comfort of English houses would be cruelly lacerated, and none such would perpetrate the absurdity of applying the name of “German stove” to the iron fire-pots that are sold as stoves by English ironmongers. As the Germans use so great a variety of stoves, it is scarcely correct to apply the title of German to any kind of stove, unless we limit ourselves to North Germany. There, and in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Russia, the construction of stoves becomes a specialty. The Russian stove is perhaps the most instructive to us, as it affords the greatest contrast to our barbarous device of a hole in the wall into which fuel is shoveled, and allowed to expend nine-tenths of its energies in heating the clouds, while only the residual ten per cent does anything towards warming the room. With the thermometer outside below zero, a house in Moscow or St. Petersburg is kept incomparably more warm and comfortable, and is _better_ ventilated (though, perhaps, not so _much_ ventilated) than a corresponding class of house in England, where the outside temperature is 20 or 30 degrees higher, and this with a consumption of about one-fourth of the fuel which is required for the production of British bronchitis. This is done by, first of all, sacrificing the idiotic recreation of fire-gazing, then by admitting no air into the chimney but that which is used for the combustion of the fuel; thirdly, by sending as little as possible of the heat up the chimney; fourthly, by storing the heat obtained from the fuel in a suitable reservoir, and then allowing it gradually and steadily to radiate into the apartment from a large but not overheated surface. The Russian stove by which these conditions are fulfilled is usually an ornamental, often a highly artistic, handsome article of furniture, made of fire-resisting porcelain, glazed and otherwise decorated outside. Internally it is divided by thick fire-clay walls into several upright chambers or flues, usually six. Some dry firewood is lighted in a suitable fireplace, and is supplied with only sufficient air to effect combustion, all of which enters below and passes fairly through the fuel. The products of combustion being thus undiluted with unnecessary cold air, are very highly heated, and in this state pass up compartment or flue No. 1; they are then deflected, and pass down No. 2; then up No. 3, then down No. 4, then up No. 5, then down No. 6. At the end of this long journey they have given up most of their heat to the 24 heat-absorbing surfaces of the fire-clay walls of the six flues.