preferred to fresh arrivers from the mother-
country.  Stepmother-country she is to an
immense proportion of her children!

SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON

AT the most active corner of the most
active lung of the great metropolis, stands a
large building of the pseudo-classical style.
Its vast monotonous white flank, exposed to
the full roar of Piccadilly, gives no sign of
life or animation; and if it were not for the
inscription on its frieze, "supported by
voluntary contributions," it might be taken for a
workhouse, or for one of Nash's palaces. Will
the reader be conducted through the
labyrinths of Saint George's Hospital, and see
something of the eternal fight that every day
beholds between the good Saint George and
the undying Dragon of Disease?

But let him not enter with the idea that
there is anything repulsive in the contemplation
of this congregation of human sufferers;
but rather with a sense of the beneficence of
an institution, which snatches poor helpless
creatures from the depressing influences of
noisome alleys, or the fever-jungles of
pestilential courts, and opens to them here—
in the free air, where a palace might be proud
to plant itself—a home, with benevolence and
charity as their friends and servitors. Neither
must he look with a half-averted glance upon
the scenes we have to show him;  for their
aim is to render the anguish of one sufferer
subservient to the future ease of some
succeeding sufferer; to make great Death
himself pay tribute to the living.

As we enter and proceed into the fine
vestibule, a crowd of students are seen hanging
about the Board-room door.  It is one o'clock,
and  "High Change"  at the Hospital.  Dotted
about, among the living mass, are some who
carry little wooden trays filled with lint and
surgical instruments.  These are  "dressers,"
waiting for the surgeons to make their daily
round of the wards.  Others have long
green books tucked under their arms:  these
are the clerks of the physicians, whose duty
it is to post up, day by day, the progress
of the patients, until "dead" or "recovered"
closes the account. They are all looking into
the Board-room, and expecting the advent
of the big Medicine-men. The younger men
regard this room with awe;  for, to them, it is
a sealed book;  and they wonder if the time
will ever come when they will lounge
carelessly in and out of it, or have their portraits
hung upon the walls, or their busts placed
upon brackets.

Now, the Board-room door opens: a surgeon
comes out, wheels to the right, strides down
the passage, and off goes one of the trays and
a broil of students.  A physician follows, and
turns to the left:  with him flies a green book
and another ring of satellites.  Surgeons and
physicians follow, one after another, each
taking up his little crowd of followers, green
books and trays;  and the noisy vestibule is at
once deserted.  Let us follow the last batch
up the stairs.

This is a physician's ward. At this hour
all the patients are in bed to await their
doctor's visit. The cluster of students follow
the physician, and settle for a few minutes
here and there upon particular beds, as they
proceed down the long vista of sufferers.
The patients are quiet enough whilst the
physicians are present;  but we will just
look in half-an-hour hence and see what
a change there will be.  At the end of each
ward is a room for the nurse.  See how she
has contrived to make it look like home;
the bit of carpet, the canary, the pictures
round the walls, all express an individuality
strongly in contrast with the bare monotonous
aspect of the open ward.  Meanwhile the
swarm of black bees is pitching upon a distant
bed; before we can reach it, however, a little
bell rings, and all the patients' eyes turn
towards a particular part of the wall. There
we see a large dial, like that of a barometer,
with a hand in the centre.  Round it are the
names of the medical officers, nurses, and the
words accident, operation, chapel, &c. There
is one of these dials in every ward, and all
are worked by a series of iron rods which
communicate with each other, the impulse
being given by the porter below in the
hall.  By this means anything that is going
on in the Hospital is known simultaneously
at every part of it.  The bell that has
just rung is part of the apparatus, and
draws attention to the movements of the
hand.  It stops at  "operation;" and in a
minute afterwards a long line of students
are seen winding up the stairs, the surgeon
at their head.  He looks calm; but depend
upon it, he bears an anxious mind, for life
and reputation wait upon his skill.  Let us
follow the crowd;  a new spirit has come
over the students;—the jolliest and most
careless walk up steadily and silently. It is
to be a tremendous operation—one of the
great arteries, deep down in the pelvis, has to
be tied, and no one knows how it may
terminate.

Steadily and quietly the Operating Theatre
is overflowed from the top benches, and the
spectator looks down upon a hollow cone of
human heads.  The focus of this living mass
is the operating table, on which, covered with
a sheet, lies the anxious patient; and every
now and then he sweeps with an anxious
glance the sea of heads which surrounds him.
Close to him is the surgeon; his white cuffs
lightly turned up, examining carelessly a
gleaming knife, and talking in whispers to
his colleagues and assistants.

Slowly the bewildered countenance of the
patient relaxes,—his eyes close,—he breathes
peacefully,—he sleeps, under the beneficent
influence of chloroform, like a two-years'
old child. The sheet is removed, and there
lies a motionless, helpless, nerve-numbed life;