superior, and she is his most sagacious adviser
when danger is impending; but her counsel is
often slighted, and not unfrequently rewarded
with the lash. She rarely mounts a horse, but
often possesses a dress with eagle's wings,
with which she is able to fly. Still more
important is the hero's horse, who is not only swift
to the most fabulous degree, and capable of
enduring any amount of privation, but talks with
a human voice, prophesies future wants, and
takes care of the hero's children if they are
bereaved of their parent. To the variety of colour
that may be found in the equine species, there is
apparently no limit whatever.

The gods, or Kudais, of this strange system
were originally seven or nine in number, and the
mention of one sole Kudai, as in the preceding
story, may be ascribed to a Christian influence.
They reside in a celestial jurte, and so far
resemble the Scandinavian deities, that they
contemplate with terror the approaching end of all
things. Moreover, they are constantly annoyed
by the seven Ainas, or demons, with whom are
allied the Swan Women, who live in the lowest
(the seventeenth) stratum of the earth, and who,
forty in number, can conglomerate themselves
at pleasure into one. The rulers of the lower
world are the nine Irle Chans, who keep in
their employ forty smiths,— not improbably,
relations of the Cyclops of the Greeks. There are
many other infernal beings of monstrous form,
whom we, for the present, pass over, but we
may mention that death does not necessarily
terminate a hero's career, inasmuch as a return
from the lower regions is by no means an
impossibility.

But the most remarkable feature of the
system is the reckless liberality with which the
power of self-metamorphosis is conferred, not
only upon demons, but upon women and horses.
All seem able to turn themselves at pleasure
into whatever shape they please without let or
hindrance, and we feel that we are in a region
where every one is a potent magician.

THE CAGED LARK.

"IN vain! Thy sunny fields are far away,
And those blue vaults that echoed to thy lay
    For ever closed from thee;
In vain— since never more the lightsome air
Upon its chartered breath thy wings shall bear—
    Thy struggle to be free!

"Thou whose wide reign was o'er the flowers unblown,
Thy realm is now a span, and all thy throne
    One hillock of green mould!
Not thine that kindly earth where sheltered lay
Thy tender fledglings from the eye of day,
    Soft in its grassy fold.

"Shut out from heaven, confined to duties low,
Tossed by a restless spirit to and fro,
    Like thee our wings we beat;
Our hopes, like thine, in fickle skies are shrined;
Or, turn we to this earth, like thee we find
    Life's greenest spot a cheat!"

Thus spake I, troubled. 'Twas an impious thought,
Born of sick musing, and a mind o'erwrought:
    True wisdom lieth deeper;
Nor bolts nor bars, nor power of human wrong,
Turning life's music to a captive song,
     Can be the great soul's keeper.

Away, away to purer fields it flies,
Where tells no blossom, while it bleeding dies,
    Of battle's cruel story;
Where life's true heroes, waking from their rest,
Shall view this earth, as suns the reddened West,
    From whence they passed in glory.

The weary strife, the beating of the bars,
The torn limbs trailing 'neath the triumph-cars,
    The mockery and the moan,
What boots it all to him whose path lies where
Some conquering day his soul shall mount the air
    Up to a golden throne?

BEDSIDE EXPERIMENTS.

NURSING is a faculty, not a science. It is
a gift, not an acquirement. There are some
worthy, tender-hearted, highly estimable people,
who can never make decent nurses. You love
them, you are charmed with them in society;
you wish them all imaginable prosperity,
but would as soon think of introducing a
French horn and a dancing bear round about
your sick-bed, as of surrendering yourself to
their best intentions. Let such people read
every manual ever printed, let them walk the
hospitals day and night, and they would be
no better for the experience. Nature forgot the
pinch of kaolin which makes good nursing when
she mixed up the clay out of which they
were formed; and art cannot always bolster
up that which nature has left imperfect. Not
that I would undervalue the scientific teaching of
nursing. Given improvable conditions, it helps
towards perfection in the art; and that means
one of the ineffable, inexhaustible, immeasurable
blessings of humanity. But nothing comes out
of nothing; and if nature laid no foundation,
how can art, or science, or anything else, build
up a superstructure? Pyramids are not raised
from the point downwards.

Doctors themselves are not of more importance
than nurses. A nurse can, at any time,
make or ruin a doctor's success by her
intelligence or stupidity; and yet we let ourselves be
messed about by all sorts of incapable nurses, as
if guinea fees and vile draughts constituted the
whole mystery of healing. There are various kinds
of nurses, of course, as there are various kinds
of sheep, of wolves, and of angels; and I dare
say we have all experienced one or other of the
varieties in our lifetime, sometimes to our
comfort and languid joy, sometimes to our weariness
and sick despair. But of all kinds, the most
trying are the non-professional family, or related
nurses.

First of these, is the good-natured, unscientific
nurse, whose shibboleth is feeding, and
who thinks that nothing can go well where
there is not cheerful conversation and a busy