permanently in their places by the patients
themselves. Scarcely less numerous are the
plaster busts and statuettes on little brackets.
The tables in every room are brought to a
bright polish by the hand-labour of its
tenants, and their bright surface adds much
to the elegance and lightness of the general
effect. Upon the tables are here and there
vases, containing fresh or artificial flowers,
newspapers, and other journals of the day,
books, chess-boards, and draught-boards. A
bagatelle-board is among the furniture of
every ward; generally it includes also a
piano or an organ. We have spoken generally
of a ward, but the word does not mean
only one long room or portion of a gallery.
There is that common room; there is a not
less cheerful dining-room; there is a bathroom,
an infirmary; and there are the old
dungeon-cells, once lighted by a round hole,
and supplied with a trough on the floor for
bed, and with an open drain-hole for toilet
furniture,—now transformed into light and airy
little bedrooms, with a neat wooden bedstead
duly equipped to take rest upon, and
carpet on the floor. Dismal old stoves have
been removed, and the hot air apparatus, by
which the building is warmed, is assisted, for
the sake of ventilation and of cheerfulness,
with open fires.

Again, there is at the top of the building,
with glass walls, and supplied with
lights for evening and foggy weather, one
of the best billiard-rooms in the three
kingdoms, maintained for the use of the
patients. It is fully adapted for its purpose,
and is comfortably furnished; a large table,
upon which are arranged magazines and
newspapers, not being forgotten. Out of
doors there are pleasant airing grounds;
there is the poultry to feed; there are sundry
fittings destined to provide amusement;
there is a good bowling-green and
skittle-ground.

Furthermore, there is good diet. The dietary
at Bethlehem has been liberal for many
years; it being now clearly understood that
full nourishment to the body is of important
service in the treatment of insanity. There
is a liberal allowance daily of good meat and
beer, with no omission of the little odds and
ends that make eating and drinking burdens
upon life not altogether unendurable, and
take the idea of prison-commons quite out of
the hospital allowance. In one cool room
we found a nest of plates containing gooseberry
pie, which had been deposited there by
their owners, simply because the room
was cool and the day hot. If there be two
ideas that never before came into association
in our minds, they are gooseberry-pie and
Bedlam.

As to all the small comforts of life, patients
in Bethlehem are as much at liberty to make
provision for themselves as they would be at
home. The restraint to which they are
subject is, in fact, that to which they would
be subjected at home, if they could there, as
in the hospital, put their case under the direction
of a competent physician. Their pleasures
are not even always bounded by the hospital
walls. They go in little knots, with an
attendant, to enjoy the sights of London and
the country round about.

When we compare with such details the
tale of Norris, twelve years bound in iron
hand and foot within these walls, and that
within the present century, we marvel at the
quickness and completeness of the change
made by a reversal of old superstitions on the
treatment of insanity. The star of Bethlehem
shines out at last. So sure is the
influence of faith and kindness, that we found
even in the refractory ward, glass ferncases
laid handy to the fist, and all the little ornaments
and pleasures to be found elsewhere.
Not a case had been cracked; not a plaster
image had been broken.

Thus we have in Bethlehem a hospital
endowed for the service of society by benefactions
that began six hundred years ago, in
which poor lunatics can be maintained and
treated quite apart from any system throwing
them on county or on parish rates, not as the
objects of a charity, but as the receivers of a
legacy from men who wished to be of use to
persons who would find the legacy an aid to
them. The money was not left to the rich
who need it not. The charter of the hospital
requires therefore that the patients who are
admitted should be poor. This was interpreted
to mean chiefly paupers, but the care
of pauper lunatics devolves on the society in
which they live, and is accepted by it. The
great county lunatic asylums now receive
them, and for this reason the number of
admissions into Bethlehem was diminishing,
when Dr. Hood, the last appointed resident
physician and superintendent, made a
suggestion to the governors, which, after careful
inquiry, they found to be not only wise,
but practicable without violation of their
charter, and which they have accordingly
adopted.

Bethlehem is not for the rich; and, for the
pauper lunatics of the community, there is
now ample and satisfactory provision. But
there is an educated working class, hitherto
left to bear its own sorrow in sickness of the
mind, or else be received among the paupers:—
curates broken by anxiety; surgeons earning
but a livelihood who, when afflicted with
insanity, are helpless men; authors checked
by sudden failing of the mind when bread is
being earned for wife and children; clerks,
book-keepers, surveyors, many more; who
often battle against trouble till the reason
fails, and then must either come upon the
rates, or, as far oftener happens, be supported
by the toil of a brave wife's fingers, or by a
sister who from scanty earnings as a governess
pays the small fee that can be afforded
to a third-rate private lunatic asylum. How
often does the toiling governess herself break