among them, and we saw them uniformly happy.
It is the sound rule of the place that the most
estimable person in the world cannot be accepted
as a nurse, if she prove unable to keep children
happy and amused. There is not much needful
to that end, beyond love, steady goodhumour,
and a perception of the ease with which a child's
attention is to be diverted from the thought
causing distress, to one that will give pleasure.
Love carries the key of all such mysteries.
Upon a bit of wall over a table in one of the sick
wards, is a cluster of little cheap daguerreotypes
of children. They belong to an old nurse
who has been in the hospital since its opening.
They are gifts from children, or from
mothers of children whom she made happy on
the sick-bed or the death-bed. She can tell
you, with a love yet fresh, and never-dying
tenderness, the tale of each, and is as proud of
her decorations as if she were a general, and
they were medals won upon the battle-field. As
truly they are. In the war against all spirits of
darkness that fight horribly against the flesh
and soul of childhood, this good nurse has fought,
and every decoration here speaks of a battle and
a victory. This nurse herself is drawing near
the day when she also may need the soothing
help she has so freely given. When the good
time shall be so nearly come, that all is done
that ought to be done for the Children's
Hospital, it will include among its means
a superannuation fund for old and faithful
nurses.

We described, ten years ago the pleasant
rooms of this hospital, the drawing-room of the
old mansion with its pictured panels, in which
are arranged the little cots of the sick children.
On the tray across each cot that has a child
awake in it, we see the Noah's ark, or the sheep
and shepherds, or the doll and doll's kitchen, or
whatever else may be delightful from among the
small machinery of childish pleasures. Wherever
the eye rests, a toy or a picture is a part of
what we see. The great doll's house is in this
window. The rocking-horse is against that wall.
There is a grand battle of tin soldiers for the
special recreation of those large dark fevered
eyes. Yonder, is a Noah's ark large enough for
a real gander and goose to waddle into. Children's
picture-books, and hymn and song-books,
lie scattered about. Gifts of toys and children's
books to the hospital are not unfrequent; money
is not grudged, but alas, the need of more and
ever more! Think of that ghastly line of little
corpses that would border a long highway
through the town, and of the care and study
needful to fight down the unnatural conditions
in the life of London that cause nearly all such
deaths. The very diseases of the children are
yet but half studied, and a valuable addition to
this Children's Hospital has been the department
of the registrar, who occupies an upper
room in the new house. Its upper chambers
have been thrown into those of the hospital,
and add to its space not only the registrar's
department, but also a new convalescent ward.

The business of the registrar is to make
punctual and accurate entry of every fact in the
medical experience of the hospital that may
throw light upon the darker secrets of disease.
When a child dies and is taken to the dead-
house, minute scrutiny is made after death for the
exact discovery and record of the physical causes
of death. Where the disease is almost hopeless,
children are not turned from the doors of this
hospital lest they die there, as it is too likely
that they will, and by swelling its death-rate,
prejudice it in the eyes of the thoughtless. For,
even a high death-rate in such an institution—
though the death-rate here is not high—would
only expose the urgency of many of the cases to
which a last chance for life was not denied. We
pass through the dispensaries to waiting-rooms
for out-patients, that have been lately very much
enlarged, and are still crowded with the poor
women, who bring their sick children to receive
the help they need. It is found necessary, by
strict rules of time and otherwise, to check in
some way the overwhelming crowd of applicants,
who already tax to the utmost, the resources of
the hospital and of its staff. The few dead
children, who are carried in the white wicker-
baskets— coffin-shaped cradles used for the
purpose— to the dead-house, along that cool
covered passage through whose roof the ivy has
struck that it may hang the gloomy path with
evergreen for those whose spirits shall be ever
young and pure among the Angels, have at least
died with a not helpless human love about their
beds.

But death here being the exception, and
convalescence the rule, let our last word be,
not of the dead-house, but of the
convalescent-room, still gay with Christmas
decorations. Here, this last Christmas was kept:
here, forty sick children— all who could leave
their beds, or bear to be brought in lying
on couches, that they might look on and be
cheated of a happy smile— made holiday for an
hour, on the evening following Christmas-day,
with music and a grand display of fantoccini.
Little phantoms themselves, rounding slowly
back into substantial health, or into a health
they had never known since they were born to
privation and suffering, they had a feast of
smiles and gentle words more welcome to them
even than the puppets, from the friends with
hearts warm in their cause, who came that
evening to share their simple pleasure.

               At the completion, in March, of
SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON'S NEW WORK,
                   A STRANGE STORY,
                    Will be commenced
A NEW NOVEL, BY MR. WILKIE COLLINS.