thousand live hundred, cubic feet. By a
cunning aarrangement of the entire plan it is
provided that, without any other ventilating
apparatus than the great staircase and the
doors and windows, a current of fresh air can
sweep in a minute over any given space
within the building, and the entire hospital
can have its air changed in an exceedingly
short time. There is no hot-water
apparatus. The wards, large as they are, having
thick walls and windows of plate glass to
exclude external cold, are warmed and
ventilated by no other means than open fires.
This system was in use last winter during
the long and severe frost, and it was found to
answer perfectly. There is nothing preferable
to an open fire. To the objection that it
carries half the heat up the chimney, the
reply is, so much the better, since it carries
foul air with it. Of course in a hospital
devoted exclusively to chest complaints an
artificial regulation of the air is necessary,
but what is good for a consumptive man is
bad to a man panting for abundance of fresh
air when prostrated with fever. Chest
complaints form about a sixth part of the general
mass of disease treated in hospitals, and for
at least four of the other five-sixths of the
sick, as for all healthy people, the pure air of
heaven is most wholesome when it has been
to the least possible degree doctored.
Furthermore there are in the new buildings
theatres, laboratories, photographer's rooms;
there is a pretty little chapel, where, with
the utmost simplicity, the architect has known
how to achieve elegance of detail that has cost
nothing but the wit spent in inventing it;
yet the endowment of this hospital — which
will be more perfect of its kind than even
the richly-endowed Bartholomew's and St.
Thomas's, founded upwards of seven
centuries ago, and aided with the wealth of
kings — is only one hundred and twenty-six
pounds a year. It exists by the voluntary
contributions of the public. As it
is with one, so is it with all — every
opportunity of enlargement and improvement is
promptly seized— the latest knowledge is
applied to the carrying out of the intentions
of the public, and the public maintains its
own work.

Because we happen to have some figures
before us that relate to one hospital, and find
them generally illustrative of the position of
institutions of the kind, we quote them;
but we do not, by any means, wish it to be
inferred that we are making out a case for
any single institution. Similar figures might
be shown for all; if we did not believe that,
we should not quote them. It is noticeable,
then, of the hospital which we have just
shown to be capable of vigorous activity, that
while it has only a nominal endowment fund,
its annual subscriptions only amount to
fifteen hundred a year, and that for the rest
of its expenses (three or four thousand a year)
it depends — and depends safely— on free
gifts, connected with which there is no
understanding that they are to be repeated. There
are some still more noticeable points
connected with statistics of attendance. This
hospital provides help to the poor in the
central districts of London, and the vast
extent of the usefulness of such institutions
is made very apparent by a summary like
the following taken from the hospital books.
The number of cases from the parish of St.
Clement Danes treated in eighteen hundred
and fifty-four amounted to two-fifths of its
whole population; from St. Mary-le-Strand,
the same proportion; from St. Dunstan and
the Temple, one-fifth of the population; from
St. Giles one-sixth; from the liberty of
the Rolls one-tenth; from St. Paul's,
Covent Garden, one-tenth; and from other
parishes respectively tenths, twelfths,
fourteenths, &c., to fiftieths, according to their
distance.

We trust that the proportion is not great
of those greedy people — generally, we grieve
to say, ladies — who falsify such lists with
assumed names and parishes, and, having left
their rings and watches at their homes, or at
a neighbouring shop, wait with the poor in
the out-patients' room for gratuitous
prescriptions. Such people afflict to a certain
extent all our hospital physicians, and, when
they are detected have the benefit of a few
words of wholesome truth about themselves.
It is as little pardonable to drink the medicine,
as to eat the bread of the poor, for the
hospital door is never wide enough to let in
all for whom it has been really opened. It
would be a wholesome corrective of this sort
of fraud, if the names of the detected were
published.

It would be well to be contented for a
season with the London hospitals now kept
on foot by public contributions. Steadily as
they all are backed, there is not one of which
the development has yet been carried to its
utmost point. All are conveniently placed
in various districts, are beset with unsatisfied
requirements; almost every one of them
wants for its completion more beds, or a
new ward; here and there one wants even as
much as a new wing. To fill up the scheme
as it is now sketched will supply ample
scope for beneficence during at least another
forty years.

The means, for example, of at once putting
an important light into the whole picture are
set while we write before the public. It
is understood that Miss Nightingale is not
only willing, but anxious, to devote herself
as nobly to the sick poor in the hospitals
of London as she has devoted herself heretofore
to the sick soldier in the hospitals of the
Crimea. It so happens, that to grasp the
priceless treasure that she offers — her
future service—is the best way we have
of giving testimony to our admiration of the
services she has already rendered. Her
desire is to superintend the nursing in some