London hospital— to train hospital nurses;
and the desire of her friends is, that the
public may supply her with the means of
serving it in its own institutions with the
utmost, possible efficiency. The nursing,
as it now exists in London hospitals, is,
notoriously, one of the weak parts of the
system. Hospital funds afford but scanty
pay; and the direct training of ill-paid
nurses by the hospital officials, or even of
well-paid nurses, would be scarcely practicable.
They must pick up their knowledge
as they can. They are good, careful women,
often; oftener, blundering, careless, and
incompetent to learn. The hospital nurse is,
nevertheless, the best nurse to be had in
private families, and rich and poor thus suffer
alike from the neglect of this branch of
attendance on the sick.

One thing, we may suggest, seems to us
very certain: that until the hospital nurse is
better paid, she cannot easily be made more
efficient. Economy is forced upon the
hospitals themselves; and there is no reason
why they should unlearn the lesson. To the
public voluntary contributions made in
money, it would not be difficult to add a
voluntary contribution of material in the
shape of nurses trained under the care of
Miss Nightingale, and already half-paid
out of an ample fund entrusted to that lady's
management. In aid of its own little town
of hospitals, the public might create a training
school for nurses, supplementary not to
one only, but to all. How to do that would
not be a hard problem for solution, if once
the wherewithal to do it were a problem
solved. To attempt less would indeed be to
fulfil the letter of a modest wish, but would
be scarcely—
"quittance of desert and merit,
According to the weight and worthiness."

DAISY HOPE.

FAR away down in the north, where the
Forth, after flowing proudly past the castle of
Stirling, loses itself in the rich alluvial plain
through which it winds in so many golden
links to the sea, there was a small collection
of cottages not large enough to aspire even to
the dignity of a village, but which rejoiced in
the collective name of Bank Row. The largest
house in the number, which bore evidence, in
size and architecture, of having seen better
days, was Daisy Hope, a long irregular
building, of which the wings had gradually
tumbled down, and the main part of the
house fallen into disrepair; while roof and
chimney in many places threatened
immediate dissolution, and only the lower floor and
a small portion of the one above could be
occupied with safety.

The lands, of which Daisy Hope had at one
time been the manorial residence, had been
worthy of the style and pretension of the
house. Far and wide their boundaries had
extended; rich Carse and Haugh had spread
themselves along the river side; cattle were
fed upon the Ochils and fish caught in the
lower links of Forth—all on the property of
the Millers of Daisy Hope. But the Millers
of Daisy Hope had been careless and
extravagant for many generations. When the
Rebellion broke out in seventeen hundred
and fifteen, there was a foolish Miller of
Daisy Hope who left his comfortable quarters
and led his tenants to join the Pretender.
The English government took him prisoner,
and sent in a bill for his maintenance in
Newgate, which cost him half his remaining land.
In thirty years afterwards the son and heir
of this intelligent gentleman followed his
father's example, and paid more dearly for
the honour of commanding a regiment at the
battle of Falkirk; for he was executed on
Tower Hill, and his estates confiscated to the
Crown. But when many years were come
and gone, there came to Daisy Hope an old
man who was recognised by some of the
neighbours as a son of the last of the Millers,
and occupied a portion of the lands as tenant;
a small portion; for though he gave it to be
understood he had tried to improve his
fortunes by merchandise in Holland, he was as
poor as any of the peasantry round him.
His family was brought up in accordance
with their altered circumstances; and some
ten or twelve years ago it was only the
students of genealogy and inquirers after family
arms who knew that the poor old man — the
grandson of the last of the lairds— who added
to his scanty profits, as cultivator of a few
acres of land, by acting as carrier between
Stirling and Bank Bow, was the lineal
descendant of the Millers of Daisy Hope.

Least of all to entertain such useless
knowledge was honest Andrew Miller himself, a
tall, upright figure, with his long white
locks escaping from under his broad lowland
bonnet, as he walked sedately by the side of
his strong and sinewy, but not over-fed
horse " The Bruce;" no thought of grandeur
or wealth ever entered his head. If he could
manage, by all his toil, to leave his wee
mitherless bairn provided for, that was all
he ever desired. And for this purpose he
worked with all his heart. And Bessy was
well worth working for. The prettiest blue-
eyed, light-hearted lassie that ever was seen,
it was the most charming sight in the world
to see her springing along on the Stirling
road to meet her father on his return; then
to see her lifted into the cart and, seizing the
reins, drive the Bruce with a tiny willow
wand in her hand, and encouraging the too
ambitiously-named quadruped to more rapid
exertion with promises of warm oatmeal for
his supper, and clean straw for his bed. This
was when she was eight or nine; but when
two more years were past, there came into her
eyes a more sedate and thoughtful expression
such as poverty often imprints on even more
youthful countenances than Bessy's; but the