continue to administer the affairs of a great pauper hospital."

This very moderate censure is only too abundantly justified by subsequent enquiry. The paid nurse appointed by the guardians found the whole system of mismanagement so atrocious and inhuman that she very properly made such communications as ensured an impartial investigation. Her examination occupied six hours, and by some of the Guardians every possible objection was taken to the questions which she was required to answer, and most ungenerous and unjust insinuations were made as to her motives. These wretched creatures do not seem to consider it possible that the sight of extreme and needless suffering, and the desire to alleviate it can ever be a motive of appreciable force in the mind of an upright and kind-hearted woman. Her evidence, however, was confirmed by the surgeon, and even by the master and matron of the workhouse, and we know with some approach to accuracy what our charity to the poor really is.

He

The surgeon (Dr. Rogers) testifies-" I had a representation made to me that the male pauper nurse, in whom I had placed much confidence, was robbing the sick. I referred the matter to the master, who immediately investigated it. told me the next day that he had come to the conclusion the statements were somewhat confirmed, and that the man should be removed from the ward. He was sitting here with his books before him. 'But,' said he, I am in this difficulty. I've been through the list of inmates, and there isn't a person I can recommend for the place. I replied, then we must apply to the Board for paid assistants.' He concurred in that suggestion. This was on Thursday. On Friday he told me he had brought my suggestion before the Visiting Committee and made the application, but that they shook their heads, and one of them, a Mr. Betts, of St. Clement's, sug

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gested that a person who had applied that day to be retained in the house, should be my nurse, stating that he had known him for many years. The master also added, that of himself, he knew nothing of the man or his fitness, but that he would send him. The man came into my surgery. He was lean and pale.

A Guardian. One of Pharaoh's lean kind, I suppose?

Witness. I want to show you how the Guardians estimated the wants of this house. This man was lean and pale, and I said, 'my friend, you are sick yourself. What have you been?' He replied, a potman at the Plough, Carey-street."

The Commissioner. And did you engage this man as your nurse?

Witness. I had no alternative. So I took him upstairs and showed him what he had to do. The poor fellow said he would do his best, and I think he did, but this was

very bad. The next morning I found everything had gone wrong, owing to his ignorance of nursing, and the novelty of his position. As I stood in the ward deploring aloud my position, a patient, who had been under treatment for chronic consumption, got up and said, 'If you'll try me, Sir, I'll do what I can to help you.' I said, 'you are too weak, my friend.' He said he had been nurse on board ship. . . For about a month so horrid a state of things prevailed in the ward that I could not bear to go into the place."

We may well judge what the sufferings of the sick were, when even the well-meaning and honest nurses were so utterly incompetent. But no nursing can possibly secure health, much less recovery from sickness, in such a place as the Strand Union Workhouse. Speaking of the nursery, Dr. Rogers says

"There are only 218 cubic feet for each inmate. The inmates of this ward are women and children, and they were so crowded last winter, that there was only about 190 feet to each. I say that no infant's life can be long preserved

(Dr. Rogers.) The requirements to satisfy me, in new sick wards, would be 1,000 cubic feet of space, 80 feet area, additional paid day nurses and paid night nurses, day room for the infirm, and baths near the wards.

Chairman. Drawing-rooms are wanted for the sick paupers!

.(Dr. Rogers,) I can confirm Miss Beeton as to the milk being stolen from the children by their nurse and sold. This was proved to me, and I threatened the women as to what I would do if it took place again. I think that practice was then put a stop to. I am satisfied the Guardians knew the condition of the sick, and I knew that by reporting to them I was damaging my own position."

Dr.

The Commissioner had here to object to one or two of the Guardians keeping up a running commentary on the evidence, and he told them this was very irregular. Rogers testified also that gin had been stolen from a dying man. "The facts were, that a dying man had some gin under his pillow, which the nurse wanted to get possession of. So he devised the plan of preparing a mustard poultice (not ordered), and in raising the dying patient to put it on his back, stole the gin."

This is English charity! This is Christian kindness to the poor! Or, rather, this is what kindness by deputy will always come to. There have been riots of dangerous breadth and ferocity on far lighter occasions; and it is, at least, a melan

choly consolation to reflect that if, in some wild tumult, the low life of London bursts upwards, carrying destruction far and wide, there will be, at any rate, a clean sweep of strong-hearted scoundrels who can perpetrate their shoppy jokes in the presence of such disgrace and infamy as would drive a noble-hearted man to utter despair and agony. These are the miscreants who take care to have carpets beaten under the windows of the sick and dying, who lock up infirm old men and women all night, and leave them to fall out of their beds and die unattended and unhelped. But surely the eyes of Christian men and women, and their hearts also, will be open for these abominations, and the day of reckoning must speedily come. Meanwhile, two concluding remarks -one as to a palliation of the evil even under the existing law; the other, as to the alternative, if the evil be not palliated.

As to the palliation, it is plain that quite another class of Guardians must be chosen. To serve as Guardian of the Poor is now a martyrdom to which a man of education and refinement will scarcely submit. To be badgered and bullied by the vulgarest men in a parish is most assuredly one of the severest trials to which a gentleman can be exposed. But gentlemen must submit to it, and rate-payers must appoint them, or the disgusting outrages which have so recently been exposed will continue to be perpetrated. The men who administer the charity of Christian England must be made to understand that such a work is not to be conducted on the principles which regulate a pawnbroker's shop. We had better leave paupers to starve in the gutter than consign them to half-blind old nurses who are too weak to lift them in their beds, and too ignorant to read the labels on a medicine bottle. Even if such wretched caricatures of help could be of the slightest benefit to the poor, it would still be an immeasurable eurse to the rich. "He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that sheweth mercy with cheerful

ness." Let those Guardians who have been known to perpetrate or justify the scandalous outrages which, thank God, are filling England with horror and indignation, be hooted out of society with fierce anathemas. Let them be made to understand that they are loathed and abhorred; that all good men shrink from them as the worst and most dangerous of lepers. No law can touch them. Their neglect, though it causes death, seems not to be manslaughter; their killing is no murder. If they would drive an old cab-horse in the public streets with a wound under his collar they might be fined or imprisoned; but they may strip the skin off the sore backs of bedridden paupers and go on their evil way rejoicing. Let these men-such men, for instance, as the one who asked if mesenteric disease was something to eat-be made to feel that, in the judgment of good men, many murderers have been hanged for lighter crimes than theirs, and been visited with less bitter execrations. And let every rate-payer protest against the enormous wickedness and diabolical cruelty of his parochial representatives, and vote always and only for Guardians of culture and refine

ment, who shall have the knowledge and the sympathies of Christian gentlemen.

Or let us clearly understand the alternative we must be prepared to take. If not riot, then, at any rate a frightful increase of crime. Why should a man be honest to end his days in a workhouse, if by some trifling dishonesty he may end his days in a gaol? We are offering a direct premium on crime. A convict prison, as compared with some of the London workhouses, is a palace of beauty and luxury.

Meanwhile, let everybody read, as they come on in rapid succession, the reports of the Poor Law Board Commissioners; and especially Mr. Farnell's valuable report, issued since this article was written. Nasty and filthy they must needs be-full of odious revelations that may well make us blush for human nature. But it is better for us to know what really is going on amongst us, that we may cease from our foolish boasts of

philanthropic progress. We must have not only poor-rates, but the relief of the poor; not only guardians, but paupers who shall really be cared for, and saved from the calamities into which they have fallen.

THE realities of the spiritual realms and of the spiritual life are set forth to us in the Scripture under images taken from the scenes and events of the visible world; and whenever anything happens of a nature to give special vividness to any class of these images, it is sometimes useful to rise from the type to the antitype and to exercise our thoughts on invisible things by the aid of impressions made upon us in the sphere of the senses. Such an opportunity occurs to us at the present time. The Christian life is largely represented to us in the Bible under the character of soldiership, and the recent exploits in war

may assist us somewhat to understand the qualities which are demanded in the warfare against darkness and wrong.

During the past month all minds have been drawn, through the graphic descriptions given by the military correspondents of the daily journals, to the tremendous contest which has shaken Central Europe. We seem to have seen almost with our own eyes the execution of the wonderful plans of the Prussian commanders on the southern slope of the Bohemian hills. All mouths are full of admiration at the completeness of the Prussian successat the foresight, at the combination,

at the celerity with which the Prussian forces, like two armies of panthers springing on their prey, were caused to debouch through the mountain defiles on the fields of Sadowa; bringing with them such endurance of heat, of hunger, and thirst, and fatigue, such unconquerable strength, such long-trained skill, such ruthless determination to do or die, such exact adaptation of all the armaments of war, such deadly application of all the newest discoveries of science and mechanical art to the work of destruction as the world has seldom seen before. Great at this moment is the glory of the iron monarchy, and of the needle-gun. A sea of blood has been shed in ten days. The whole of Bohemia lies weltering in gore. And as the result of the stupendous encounter seen from the lofty tower of Königgrätz, the proud gigantic form of the Austrian empire is beheld lying at full length upon the vast battle-field crying for mercy, its panoply broken by the storm of hot thunderbolts that descended upon it from the north, as when God raised a meteoric shower from heaven upon the armies of Canaan; the effect on the European nations of the sudden and terrible overthrow of the enormous forces of the south being such as to remind us of the exclamation of the people of Babylon in the ApocalypseWho is like the beast; who is able to make war with him!"

Now if the art of raising religious thought is to work through parables, to rise from the seen to the unseen, to take up the thread of reflection where the senses leave it, and there to join on a new thread of reflection on the spiritual world, then it may be possible to learn some cogent lessons on the spiritual warfare from what we have just beheld. Perhaps these events may assist even the most sluggish imagination to realize the meaning of the Scriptures when they speak so often of the spiritual life as the war of the Lord."

It is indeed very noticeable how steadily this line of imagery is maintained by the apostles and

prophets. Personally and literally our Saviour did not fight. "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter." "He gave his back to the smiters." And the absence of all resistance on His part was taken by the Jews as a sure sign of the hollowness of His pretensions to be the predicted Messiah. But not the less is He spoken of as the "Captain of cur Salvation," given to be a "Leader and Commander to the people: sent by God to the earth to organize and maintain a war against the kingdom of darkness," to establish God's reign on earth, and to overthrow the usurping power. And this war is not one simply of defence but of conquest. Its object is definite and its aim persistent. It is

to be carried on in every land to the end of time, and to end in a catastrophe of which a lively image has just been presented to us; by His iron sceptre the opposing power is to be broken to shivers, like a potter's vessel." Under this view the Church is spoken of as an army. Its first expedition issued from Jerusalem, and thither returned its generals and soldiers to relate their victories over the heathen, as in the council described in the Acts of the Apostles. The military language is adhered to throughout. It is the "fight of faith." The crown is promised to "him that overcometh," literally, "to the conqueror." The reward is promotion over the subject provinces." He shall sit down with me on my throne." "They shall reign over the earth." Success in the conflict is termed "victory." "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory." "Thanks be to God who maketh us always to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of His name in every place." An image drawn from the custom of burning sweet odours in the triumphal processions that ascended to the Capitol. The instruments of success are called "weapons," not indeed "carnal." but "divinely mighty to the bringing down of fortresses," and to the "subjugation of thought to God." We have full descriptions of the armour to be worn by every soldier, on the right