I need not pursue this subject much further; common sense will tell everybody who will reflect on the subject with common sense that I am correct, and that it is best for persons of every age to have to themselves the shelter within which they pass one third of their whole lives-thirty years of life, if they live to be ninety years old. I dwell, therefore, only on one point more in favor of the single bed, and that is to enforce the lesson that under the single-bed system it is rendered impossible to place very old and very young persons to sleep together. To the young this is a positive blessing, for there is no practice more deleterious to them than to sleep with the aged. The vital warmth that is so essential for their growth and development is robbed from them by the aged, and they are enfeebled at a time when they are least able to bear the enfeeblement.

The single bed for every sleeper determined on, the size of the bedstead and the number of bedsteads in the room, according to space, should be considered. For ordinary adult persons the bedstead need not exceed three feet six inches in width by six feet six inches in length; and in no room, however well it may be ventilated, should a bedstead be placed in less than a thousand cubic feet of breathing-space. A bedroom for two single beds should not measure less than sixteen feet long by twelve feet wide and eleven feet high. There are some sanitarians who would not be satisfied with those dimensions for a room to be occupied by two persons, and I frankly admit the dimensions are close to the minimum, though with good ventilation they may, I think, suffice. With bad ventilation they are confessedly out of court, and I name them merely for the sake of meeting the necessities of the limited bedroom space that pertains to the houses of great cities. In my own mind I do not consider twice the amount of space named at all too much, even with the ventilation as free as I have suggested in previous chapters of this essay.

There can be no mistake that the bedstead should be constructed of metal, of iron or brass, or a combination of those metals. Wooden bedsteads are altogether out of date in healthy houses. They are not cleanly, they harbor the unclean, and they are not cleansable like a metal framework. The framework of the bed should be so constructed that the bed or mattress is raised two feet from the floor of the room, and the whole framework should be steady and so well knit together that the movements of the sleeper should cause neither creaking nor vibra

tion.

A good deal of controversy has been raised on the matter of curtains for beds. From the old system of curtains all round the bed, like a tent, there has been a reaction to an entire aboli

tion of the curtains. I am of opinion that this complete change is not beneficial. Two light side head-curtains, with a curtain at the back of the head and a small tester, are, I think, very good parts of a bedstead. The curtains fulfill a doubly useful purpose: they shield the head and face of the sleeper from draughts, and they enable the sleeper to shut out the direct light from the window without in any way necessitating him to shut the light out at the window itself. The room may be filled with light, and yet the sleeper may be shielded from the direct action of it upon his eyes if he have the curtain as a shield.

The kind of bed on which the body should rest is a question on which there is extreme divergence of opinion. Whenever we leave our own bed to go to sleep elsewhere, in an hotel or in the house of a friend, it is almost certain that we shall find a bed differing from that to which we are accustomed. We may find a bed of down so soft that to drop into it is like dropping into light dough; we may find a soft feather bed, or a soft mattress, or a spring mattress, a moderately hard mattress, or a mattress as hard, I had nearly said, as the plank bed for which our prisons are now so unenviably notorious. These differences are determined by the taste of the owner of the bed, without much reference to principle, or to the likings of any one else in the world; not a very good or satisfactory state of things. There ought to be some principle for guidance in a trial so solemn as that which settles the mode in which our bodies shall rest for a third of our mortal existence.

I fear it is hard to fix on definite principles, but there is one principle, at any rate, which may be relied on, and which, when it is understood, goes a long way toward solving the question of the best kind of bed for all sleepers. The principle is, that the bed, whatever it be made of, should be so flexible, if I may use the term, that all parts of the body may rest upon it equally. It ought to adapt itself to the outline of the body in whatever position the body may be placed. The very hard mattress which yields nothing, and which makes the body rest on two or three points of corporeal surface, is at once excluded from use by this principle, and I know of no imposition that ought to be excluded more rigorously. On the other hand, the bed that is so soft that the body is enveloped in it, though it may be very luxurious, is too oppressive, hot, and enfeebling; it keeps up a regular fever which can not fail to exhaust both physical and mental energies, and at the same time it really does not adapt itself perfectly to the outline of the body.

The best kind of bed, taking everything into consideration, is one of two kinds. A fairly soft feather bed laid upon a soft horsehair mattress,

or a thin mattress laid upon one of the elastic steel-spring beds which have lately been so ingeniously constructed of small connected springs that yield in a wave-like manner to every motion. It is against my inclination to try to write out the time-honored old feather bed and mattress, but I am forced to state that the new steel-spring bed is, of necessity, the bed of the future. It fulfills every intention of flexibility; it is durable; it goes with the bedstead, as an actual part of it, and it can never be a nest or receptacle of contagion or impurity.

On the subject of bedclothes, the points that have most to be enforced are that heavy bedclothing is always a mistake, and that weight in no true sense means warmth. The light down quilts or coverlets which are now coming into general use are the greatest improvements that have been made, in our time, in regard to bedclothes. One of these quilts takes well the place of two blankets, and they cause much less fatigue from weight than layer upon layer of blanket covering.

As to the actual quantity of clothes which should be on the sleeper, I can lay down no rule of numbers or quantities, because different people require such different amounts. I can, nevertheless, offer one very good practice which every person can learn to apply. It should be the rule to learn so to adapt the clothing that the body is never cold and never hot while under the clothes. The first rule is usually followed, and need not be dwelt on; the last is too commonly broken. It is a practice too easily acquired to sleep under so

much clothing that the body becomes excessively heated, feverishly heated. This condition gives rise to exhaustion, to disturbing dreams, to headache, to dyspepsia, and to constipation. It is so injurious that it is better to learn to sleep with even too little than with too much clothing over the body. This, specially, is true for the young and the vigorous. It is less true for the old, but in them it holds good in a modified degree.

The position of the bed in the bedroom is of moment. The foot of the bed to the fireplace is the best arrangement when it can be carried out. The bed should be away from the door, so that the door does not open upon it, and it should never, if it can be helped, be between the door and the fire. If the head of the bed can be placed to the east, so that the body lies in the line of the earth's motion, I think it is in the best position for the sleeper.

The furniture of the bedroom, other than the bed, should be of the simplest kind. The chairs should be uncovered, and free from stuffing of woolen or other material; the wardrobe should have closely fitting doors; the utensils should have closely fitting covers; and everything that can in any way gather dust should be carefully excluded.

In a word, the bedroom, the room for the third of this mortal life, and that third the most helpless, should be a sanctuary of cleanliness and order, in which no injurious exhalation can remain for a moment, and no trace of uncleanliness offend a single sense.

B. W. RICHARDSON, M. D. (Good Words).

(To be continued.)

SEPTE

SAGACITY OF JURIES.

PTEMBER 1st (1861).—I will throw together my conversations of the last two days with Sir W. Erle.t

I mentioned that in all the Swiss constitutions trial by jury in criminal matters was required. Erle. And very wisely.

* See "Appletons' Journal" for May.

+ Sir William Erle was appointed, in 1844, one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas; in 1846 he was transferred to the Court of Queen's Bench; in 1859 he was promoted to the Chief Justiceship of the Court of Common Pleas, on the elevation of Lord Campbell to the Woolsack. He retired into private life, taking his farewell of the Bench on November 26, 1866.-ED.

Senior. Wisely for the purpose of keeping power in the hands of the people? Erle. Wisely for all purposes.

Senior. Including the discovery of truth? Erle. Including the discovery of truth. I believe that a jury is in general far more likely to come to a right decision than a judge.

Senior. That seems to me strange. The judge has everything in his favor-intelligence, education, experience, and responsibility.

Erle. With respect to intelligence, a judge is certainly superior to an ordinary juryman; but among the twelve there will generally be found one, often two men, of considerable intelligence, and they lead the rest. As to education, the jury have decidedly the advantage. The education

of a judge, as far as relates to deciding fact, is the education of a practicing barrister who is immersed in the world of words, and removed from acting in the commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing facts which form the staple of contest. He is so accustomed to deny what he believes to be true, to defend what he feels to be wrong, to look for premises, not for conclusions, that he loses the sense of true and false-i. e., real and unreal. Then he is essentially a London gentleman; he knows nothing of the habits of thought, or of feeling, or of action in the middle and lower classes who supply our litigants, witnesses, and prisoners. And it is from barristers thus educated that judges are taken.

When tried by a jury, the prisoner is tried by his peers, or by those who are a little above his peers, who are practically accustomed to the facts adduced as probantia, and can truly appreciate their value. I have often been astonished by the sagacity with which they enter into his feelings, suppose his motives, and from the scattered indicia afforded by the evidence conjecture a whole series of events. For, after all, the verdict, if it be a conviction, must always be a conjecture.

Experience the judge certainly has. As counsel or as judge he has taken part in many hundreds of trials. The juryman may never have served before. But this long experience often gives the judge prejudices which warp his judgment. The counsel who are accustomed to plead before him find them out and practice on them.

I was counsel in a case of assault. My client had had three ribs broken by a drunken bargeman. The opposite counsel cross-examined as to whether since the accident, he had not been a field-preacher, whether he had not actually preached from a tub. He admitted that he had. I did not see the drift of this, for, though a man could not easily preach directly after his ribs had been broken, he might when they had reunited. The judge summed up strongly against me, and my client got nothing. I afterward found that the judge had an almost insane hatred of fieldpreachers. It is true that each juryman may have prejudices equally absurd, but they are neutralized by his fellows, and, above all, they are not known. They can not be turned to account by counsel.

As for responsibility, a judge being a permanent officer, especially a judge sitting alone, is more responsible to public opinion than any individual juryman, who is one of a body assembled only once and immediately dissolved. But I believe that the feeling of moral responsibility is much stronger in the case of the juryman, to whom the situation is new, whose attention is excited, who for the first time in his life is called upon to exercise public important functions in the

face of all his neighbors, than in that of a judge who is doing to-day what he has been doing perhaps every day for ten years before. I have seen dreadful carelessness in judges. Again, a judge is often under the influence of particular counsel; some he hates, some he likes, some he relies on, and some he fears. It is easy for a judge to be impartial between plaintiff and defendant-indeed, he is almost always so; it is difficult to be impartial between counsel and counsel.

Senior. I have felt that myself, but in general the feeling of dislike was stronger than that of liking. There were men on whose side I could decide only by an effort; they were so false, so sophistical, so anxious to dress up a cause which was sufficiently good if merely clearly and simply stated, that I was almost ashamed to decide for them lest I should be supposed to have been deceived. But I do not recollect having had favorites.

Erle. Perhaps you had them without knowing it, and attributed solely to the argument a force which was partly due to your good opinion of the speaker.

Senior. Just as a juryman, who had been in court during the whole sitting at Liverpool, congratulated Scarlett on having been always employed by the side that was in the right. What class give you the best jurymen ?

Erle. The respectable farmers and the higher shopkeepers in the country towns. The men from the great cities, accustomed to excess in trade speculations, are inferior to them, especially in an honest sense of duty. The worst juries that I have known came from such places. Their adventurous gambling trade seems to make them reckless. At one time they appeared to have pleasure in deciding against what they supposed to be my opinion, which I counteracted by seeming to give more emphasis to the reasons in favor of the decision to which I was opposed. One of the things which used at first to surprise me is, the very small motive which is enough to lead men to commit atrocious crimes. Smethurst's *motive, for instance, was a small one.

Senior. You hold Smethurst guilty?

Erle. Certainly I do. If the evidence against him was insufficient, almost all circumstantial evidence must be insufficient, for it scarcely ever is stronger.

Senior. Sir George Lewis was partly influenced by the want of motive.

* Dr. Smethurst was accused of marrying Miss Bankes during the lifetime of his wife. He caused her to make a will in his favor, and she died soon afterward of slow

poison. He was convicted and sentenced to execution, but Sir George Lewis, who was Home Secretary at that time, did not consider the evidence sufficient, and granted him a free pardon. Smethurst was afterward tried, convicted, and imprisoned for bigamy.-Ed.