of model might be formed, and the prejudices of committees and councils softened down?

"I feel it would be a great matter if the whole state of the chief foreign and English hospitals could be made known, with all their differences as to management, and with practical hints for improvement.

"The difficulties of the case are great, but still much might be done, though everything could not be done. The religious condition of England heightens the difficulty. Hospitals do not belong to the Church,—but have as subscribers the representatives of all kinds of views; and, though Church of England chaplains are in most cases appointed, yet any great movement on their part would be looked upon with jealousy by many of the subscribers. Even if they belonged to the Church, there would still be struggles between side and side.

"At the same time, it will not do to let difficulties drive us into inactive despair. If the various governors and councils could but be impressed with the great importance of having a more religious system at work throughout, we might hope that a general elevation would gradually take place.

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"A great effort, a prolonged, or a patient effort, will not, I believe, be in vain, when made in the name of Christ."

23. "The plan suggested would not be practicable in it the *** Hospital. If there were no other difficulty, would not be agreed to by the authorities; the cure of the body is considered (and perhaps rightly) the first care, the soul quite a secondary matter; and the nurses are said to have fully enough to do to attend to their duties as nurses. If therefore I were to suggest such a course of training, or anything approaching to it, it would be instantly opposed.

"I can see but one way to work for the patient's spiritual good through the nurses. Pains must be taken to get religious nurses,-then many little things will be done unobtrusively by them without awakening opposition.

"It has occurred to me that a training institution for nurses might be a practicable and useful improvement. It might be a Model Hospital, where the business of nursing might be taught, and religious training added; but there would always be this difficulty,-that unless the heart was really changed, rules and systems, however well learned, would soon drop, when the eye of the originator was removed.

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Perhaps the simplest effort would be to establish a society to look out for, and register the names of suitable religious women to recommend to hospitals. It might easily be made the interest of persons wishing to be nurses to connect themselves with such an institution, by requiring from them, when established as nurses, a small annual subscription; and holding out benefits, such as a retiring pension, or relief in case of illness or confirmed incapacity.

"There are two full services on Sunday in the Chapel, and four services on week-days, at each of which I give lectures or addresses; and there is the visitation of the wards, containing in all above three hundred patients.

"On one occasion I remember to have been three hours in one group of four wards, containing about forty-five patients, and I had not conversed with half of them. Of course I cannot usually give anything like that time, nor do I ever attempt it. I only mention it to show what there is to be done if there were hands to do it."

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CHAPTER III.

GENERAL ATTEMPTS TO REMEDY THE EVIL.

SUCH is the present state of hospitals, according to those most competent to judge; such the encouragement to try to amend them.

Let us state what has been done in time past, and see if no one has considered the necessity of the case formerly.

In the middle of the last century, Sir James Stonehouse, after his conversion to Christianity, "was no longer content to be merely a physician to the body." He knew how often sickness is sent by God to soften the stony heart, and prepare it for the reception of the heavenly seed; and therefore, though he was not a minister of the Gospel, he could now scarcely think he deserved the name of a Christian, if he was not willing, when proper occasions offered, to instruct and comfort his patients, as their circumstances and his own might permit. In 1748 he published two religious tracts, Friendly Advice to a Patient,' and 'Spiritual Directions for the Uninstructed,' both of which were adopted by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

Hervey (author of the 'Meditations,' and 'Theron and Aspasio,' who, with Doddridge, was instrumental in Dr. Stonehouse's conversion) wrote thus to him in November, 1746:-"I heartily applaud the zeal you show for

the spiritual welfare of the patients. The Infirmary would be an inestimable blessing, if, by the grace of God, it might be productive of a reformation in the persons whom it admits and discharges. I hope the clergy concerned in the management of the Infirmary will with delight and assiduity concur in the prosecution of so desirable an end."

What the results of his attempts were does not appear, nor what scheme he adopted.

No doubt many Christian-minded individuals have made similar efforts in succeeding years. In 1825, the want of nurses for the sick poor is stated in 'Blackwood's Magazine.' We give an extract from it :—

"My friend C is a country clergyman. In his youth he was an officer in the army, and served during several campaigns in the late war in the Peninsula. At the conclusion of the war he quitted the army, looked round for a profession, and, unsuitable as it may appear, fixed on the Church, and having passed the requisite time at college in honest and earnest study, he took orders, and obtained a curacy. He sometimes comes to town to visit me. On one of these occasions he was complaining of the difficulty of procuring medical attendance for the sick poor of his parish, many of whom lived far from the town where the parish surgeon resides, and he was wishing that it was possible to procure a few women of a superior order to the generality of nurses, and taught by a residence in hospitals to recognize and relieve the most common kinds of illness. They should be,' he added, 'animated with religion; science and mere humanity cannot be relied on.' An order of women such as these, distributed among the country parishes of the kingdom, would be of incalculable value. It was formerly the boast of the Catholics that the Protestants had no missionaries. That boast is silenced, but they may still affirm that Protestantism has not yet produced her Sisters of Charity.

"When I was in Flanders a short time ago, I saw at Bruges and Ghent some of this singular and useful order

of nuns. They are of a respectable station in society, and I was told that it is not uncommon for the females of the most wealthy, and even noble families, voluntarily to quit the world and its pleasures, and enter this order, and dedicate themselves to the most menial attendance on the sick. I went one morning to the hospital at Bruges; all the nurses are 'Béguines,' and it was a striking sight to see these women, whose countenances, manners, and a something in the quality or clearness of their stiff white hoods and black russet gowns, were expressive of a station superior to their office, one with a pail in her hand, another on her knees washing the floor of the chapel. The physician to the hospital spoke in the highest terms of the humility and tenderness with which they nursed his patients.

"My friend is right. The attendants on the sick, whether professional or menial, are commonly actuated by scientific zeal, by mere natural humanity, or by mercenary motives; but these cannot be trusted to for steady attention the one subsides with the solution of a question, the other hardens by habit, the last requires jealous inspection. There are long intervals of indifference, and apathy, and inattention; we want an actuating motive of a more steady and enduring nature, which requires neither curiosity, nor emotion, nor avarice, to keep it alive, which still burns in the most tranquil states of mind, and out of reach of human inspection; and this motive is religion.

"I have often seen, and still often see (for I must let out the secret that I am a physician), cases in which the sufferings of illness are much increased, and I have every reason to believe the chances of recovery much diminished, by a want of persevering attention to the sick.

"Let the Church, or if not, let that class of Christians in whom, above all others, religion is not a mere Sunday ceremony, but the daily and hourly principle of their thoughts and actions, let all serious Christians, I say, join, and found an order of women like the Sisters of Charity in Catholic countries; let them be selected for