the priory of the Dominicans of Saint
Bartholomew. Saint Thomas's was, in the first
instance, a hospital for converts and poor
children, founded as the Almonry by Richard,
a Norman prior of Bermondsey. Peter de
Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, soon
afterwards converted it into a priory, and
endowed it handsomely. In the time of Henry
the Eighth (who had enlarged and aided
Saint Bartholomew's) it fell to the crown,
and Edward the Sixth, with the help of the
citizens, founded it as it now stands, and
dedicated it to Saint Thomas the Apostle
vice Saint Thomas à Becket. Such was the
transition of sick hospitals in this country
from monastic into purely medical control. The
story of the Hôtel Dieu in Paris is the story
of the development of the Hospital System in
countries that have remained under the discipline
of the Roman Church. Founded in very
remote times—as early as the year six hundred
and sixty— by Landry, Bishop of Paris,
endowed and enriched by successive generations
of kings and citizens, it now owns whole streets
of Paris, and is probably the wealthiest
foundation of the kind in Europe. It is also,
as everybody knows, one of the very best
sick hospitals existing. Of such history we
say no more. It has been enough for us to
show how intimately the birth of the
Hospital System is connected with the great
event we celebrate at Christmas. They
exist, indeed, literally and perfectly as a
part of Christmas hospitality.

We have none heartier. No institutions
in this country, maintained by public funds,
are managed with a stricter reference to the
end proposed in their foundation, than the
hospitals for the sick in London, Edinburgh,
Dublin, and the chief provincial towns. Not
very many of them are endowed. Most of
them, overwhelmed by applications from
unhappy creatures who beg for relief when
in the sorest need, strain to the utmost their
powers of usefulness, and even spend by
anticipation the increased help which the public
will be asked to give. The English public
very rarely fails to meet such bills drawn, not
dishonestly, on its benevolence. Let us be
just enough, before we pass further, to say
that the mainstay of the European hospital
system as it now exists— no longer in charge
of the monks— is the right-minded liberality
of the medical profession. Hospitals for the
sick are practically entrusted altogether to
the control of this body of men; which might
have mismanaged its trust, but has not done
so. It has foregone every mean advantage
and seized only a noble one. Using the
masses of disease brought together in these
great establishments, as means of study,
for the sake of experience that can be acquired
in them by skilled men, and of the practical
knowledge that can be imparted in them
to the student, the profession undertakes,
gratuitously, to supply them with the best
attendance that its ranks can furnish, to
watch over them jealously, and to protect
them with all its might against the black
spirit of jobbing. There are many littlenesses
manifested in the medical profession;
but this is a greatness. The relation in which
it stands to the hospital system throughout
Europe, forms indeed one of the best features
of modern civilised society.

There are also many phrases cherished by
the nation and inscribed by it on flags of
triumph, which are not so really glorious as
the inscription commonly seen running across
the walls of a great hospital— Supported by
Voluntary Contributions. How large a mass
of quiet charity, exerted year by year, keeps
every such establishment in action! Reliance
on it strengthens. Only eight years ago a
hospital for diseases of the chest was founded in the
city of London for the aid of poor persons
suffering from those national maladies. It began
quietly with a modest house in Finsbury; but
soon seeing its way to support while it felt how
urgent was the cry of suppliants about its
door, built for itself (in great part with money
borrowed from its treasurer) a hospital, exactly
fitted for its uses, in Victoria Park. This has
been open since the spring of the year to as
many patients as the income of the institution
will maintain. It is fitted carefully with
apparatus for maintaining that equable supply
of warmth which is at all times so essential
in a chest disease, carefully ventilated,
(probably the best specimen of artificial
ventilation to be met with in the hospitals of
London,) replete with ingenious contrivances,
and, indeed, wanting in no essential
thing. Nobody doubts all the while— it is
taken for granted— that, as such a hospital
was really wanted in that quarter of London,
the voluntary contributions will suffice for
its support.

The King's College or Central London
Hospital, in Portugal Street, is even now
furnishing another example of this quiet reliance
on the public; although, as an institution having
larger duties to perform and cares to bear, it
has felt its way more slowly. For a long time
it was content to burn a steady light under
an ugly bushel; having an old workhouse
patched into a hospital for the reception of
its patients. Manfully enduring this for
many years while gathering a building fund,
and at last building, we believe, only as far as
and as fast as the fund allows, it is now erecting,
and already in part possession of, a
hospital that will be probably the most
perfect in London. One wing is completed
and occupied. Of its spacious wards we can
give some idea in this way. The hospital in
Victoria Park just mentioned is admirably
built, and its managers are justly pleased to
be able to say that the space allotted to each,
patient varies between eight hundred and
twelve hundred cubic feet. In the new
King's College Hospital the allowance of air
to each patient is one thousand eight hundred,
and, in the large medical wards, will be two