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THE WORLD OF LONDON.

PART XIII.

WALKING THE HOSPITALS.

We apprehend that few idle people, from choice, care to turn aside from the contemplation of busy life engaged in healthy industry, and from the excitement of the living streets, to explore the abiding. places of disease, pain, and death: yet we would not

care for the man who would not sometimes visit the homes of the miserable, take a lesson of life in the wards of an hospital, and anticipate the debt he will sooner or later have to pay, by seeing it paid by others. While you are killing the enemy-who is certain, notwithstanding, to get the better of you one day or another-with billiards, or dice, or gossip, or the bottle at the west end, it might do you good were you suddenly to be transferred to a medical or surgical ward of St Thomas's, St Bartholomew's, or Guy's; and, by the dismal light of a lamp, to contemplate the varied expression of human agony you will meet with on every side; the crimsoned flush of raging fever, the wandering eye and frothy lip of wild delirium, the halfcrown patch of hectic blush upon the shrunken cheek of the consumptive; death doing his work by sap and storm, by night and day, within the walls, within musket-shot of the scenes of your midnight revelry and mid-day languor, where your only business is idleness, your only pleasure dissipation.

"Curse the fellow, he is not going to be funny this month," saith the reader: very likely not; therefore lay us down, or take us up, just as you are situated. Life has serious aspects, nay, even painful ones, and our busi ness is to make you acquainted with both sides: therefore turn with us into this gateway, or go back again to your club, whichever of the two will afford greatest entertainment.

You have hardly entered the precincts of one of our great hospitals, when you experience uneasy sensations. The unnatural quietude of those great quadrangles in the immediate vicinity of crowded thoroughfares, whose discordant noises reach the ear commingled in one general

hum, amaze you. There is a conventual hush over the place; your footstep awakens the echoes of the piazzas and passages, as you make your way from one quadrangle to another. In the distance you may observe an irregular clump of lowly buildings, surmounted by domes and skylights; these are the dissecting and lecture rooms of the hospital, where the bodies of the dead are made subservient to the welfare of the living.

You enter the house; what a strange acidulated smell! The smell of a barrack is peculiar a frowzy, dampy smell: the smell of a workhouse is the frowziness without the damp: but the smell of an hospital is different from both; it is an odour, as it were, of spilt vinegar, very peculiar, especially in the dog-days, and not very pleasant. Then the surgical wards, the fever wards, the small-pox wards, have their own peculiar odours, which we might sniff through several pages with great satisfaction; but in pity to the olfactories of the unprofessional reader, we shall not dwell further on hospital odours.

Who are those frowzy women in the bed-gowns and frilled caps crossing the square to and fro ? These are nurses; sisters, as they are called -a name derived from those remote times when sisterhoods of religious women performed the kindly offices of tending the sick poor, as they do to this day in continental countries. You see in the expression of their faces how little care or anxiety they feel, hardened as they are by usage, in the performance of the most exquisitely painful duties; they look not like those whose daily and nightly task it is to moisten the lips of the dying, to close the eyes and decently dispose the limbs of the frequent dead. the contrary, the great majority have the expression of comfortable jolly cooks in small respectable families where scullery-maids are kept.

On

In the passages, or in the lobbies, as you progress towards the wards, if you keep your ears open, you may

hear not a few extraordinary dialogues. A group, consisting of one or two of the dressers, a knot of sisters, a surgery man, and some of the pupils, is collected at the stair-head, and at intervals you catch unconnected portions of their mingled professional conversation.

"So Sally Dawes is dead this morning." ." "Cuss the old cat; God be good to her, Betsy; what a world of trouble that wretch gived me in Mary's ward -never knowed when to have done calling for drink, night nor day." "Simon, have you got my blisters and poultices on your tray?" "Here's Goody Simpson's darter says as how she knows her mother's dead, an' a hollerin' like mad in the hairy: may she go up, sir?" "'Gainst the rules. Guvn'rs won't hear of it; tell her to call again to-morrow." "Hilloa, you there, come up, and carry down the stiff uns." "How many, sir?" "Let me see: Irish hodman, in Job's ward" -"Beg your pardon, sir, but he's not quite dead yet." "Not dead! you rascal, do you suppose I'd have given you an order to take him down if he wasn't dead." "Beg your pardon, sir, but he swears he won't die till God pleases." "Won't he? we shall see whether or not. There's Sally Dawes, she's dead as a red herring, I'll warrant her." "Mr Mugg, if the house surgeon hears you neglected to leech the erysipelas leg in No. 9, you'll hear of it." "Dear me, sir, what shall I do?" "Clap on the suckers, and when they bite, take them off again: say they're yesterday's bites.' "That will be a bite; he! he he!" "Staggers, I'll bet you two to five in grog, Slashem's lithotomy case capsizes the pail." "Say on the table, and I'll take you. you see any thing verdant ?" "Oho!" Two to one against the woman in the puerperal ward- what's her name? Come, I'll back death against the doctor, for any sum you like to name." "Kitty Foley, if you please, sir, has made up her mind not to submit to the operation." "What! after I have had the trouble of arranging the instruments; there's gratitude for you! Tell her she must be operated on; the bill has been up this week: tell her she'll die if she doesn't." "She says, if you please, sir, she only wants to be let die in peace." ." "What! and the whole class

to be disappointed; impossible! Tell
her she can't be allowed to die in
peace, it's against the rules of the
hospital." "Well, Clotty, have you
bled all the cases?" Surgeryman,
have you given all the-ahem"-" All
right, sir." "I say, Simkins, you
don't look well this morning."
"No!
-bless me, I never felt better in all
my life." " Why, what's the matter?
Let's feel your pulse. Don't you, now,
ill?"
really feel very
"Come, none
of your nonsense: you know I cut
my finger in the dissecting-room, and
you want to frighten me." "I say,
now, is there any body game to throw
a pebble at that gas-lamp?" "Please,
sir, the sailor just come in won't have
his head shaved, nor take his gruel:
"Not a
will he get his gruel, sir ?"
doubt of it, Molly, if he stays here
long enough." "Hark! there's Pro-
fessor Puke coming up stairs; so off,
And the
boys, and look solemn."
conference is for the present broken

up.

Now, take a turn through the wards Observe how variwith the doctor. ous the expression of the patients' countenances: the clouded brow, oppressed eye, distended nostril, and parched lip, of impending fever; the drunken aspect and stertorous breathing of apoplexy; the fearful shivering of the sufferer from ague; then, in the chronic wards, note the family likeness among all the patients-the subdued expression of pain, so long continued that habit has rendered its endurance tolerable. Now, if you have nerve, enter the condemned cell-the place allotted to incurables. Here are, you see, some five-and-twenty fellow creatures waiting for the friendly hand of death to lay them in the peaceful Do grave; and, strange to say, such of them as are not tortured with acute pain, are not merely resigned, but positively cheerful!

Stand for a moment at the foot of this bed; let us look at the card. Oh! cancer of the breast, operated on for the third time yesterday. You observe the poor creature is dying already unconsciousness has blunted the arrow of the destroyer; and although she yet breathes, the bitterness of death is past. These oranges and lemons, cups of wine, teapots, are the offerings of the inhabitants of the ward to their expiring fellow-sufferer. The little girl you see limping about with

disease of the hip joint, smiling as good-naturedly as if she was at play, was the nurse of the poor creature before you, and tended her with the same devotion as if she had been her own daughter. Even now, she moistens the unconscious lips, and whispers pity into the unheeding ear.

There is something very extraordinary, and to us inexplicable, in the variety of shapes in which death makes his approaches, and the way in which he is met by minds differently constituted. In early life we had abundant opportunities of contemplating death on a great scale; and we took a melancholy pleasure in watching the struggles of the parting spirit, as if we could catch its shadow flung on earth, as it flew to its abiding-place beyond the grave.

But, with all our watching, we never could advance a step in our investigation. We have seen a virtuous mother of a family, from whose hands the sacred volume was never absent during her long illness, expire delirious, with a torrent of blasphemy and obscenity horrible to hear. Over and over again we have witnessed the cheerful, and, to all human comprehension, happy deaths of those destitute of the slightest sense of religious obligation; while those imbued with the strongest and most scriptural feelings, have met death with tears, trem

blings, and lamentations. Some we have observed to make the fact of their approaching death an excuse for imploring some delicacy which they have never tasted-as, for example, a peach or a bunch of grapes; others will cry out incessantly for wine, and die miserable if they do not get as much as they wish. One would die happy, he says, if he could see the sun; another gives the moon his preference. The fantasies of dying people are truly extraordinary, and the mode in which they meet death, reconcilable, as we imagine, chiefly to constitution of body and habits of life. Soldiers, though by no means a religious class generally, we have observed to die fearless of death itself, whether or not indifferent to the preparation for the life after death. The happiest deaths, we think, other things being equal, are those of poor ignorant creatures, whose faith in their religion is unshaken. The pride of human knowledge suggests doubts and fears, which, howsoever little they may disturb lusty life, are worse than racks and wheels in the hour of approaching death.

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FUNERALS.

People have an ominous dread of encountering funerals; now, for our own part, we like to meet a funeral; and, what is more, we find a melancholy pleasure in turning round and following it. Touches of genuine nature are to be met with at a funeral. The artificial is thrown aside, the mask we all wear in the business or pleasure of life falls off, and we are able sometimes to catch occasional glimpses of men as they really are, or ought to be. We say sometimes, for there is abundance of hypocrisy at a funeral as any where else, but even this is worth contemplating. There is much matter for conjecture in funerals; we like to imagine that we see reflected in the faces of the mourners what manner of Iman was the deceased. We try to puzzle out the expression of the disap. pointed legatee, and the more subdued

The

grief of him, who, having been be→ queathed much, regrets that he has not got more; or of him who, having the lion's share, is yet sorrowful that he had not the good fortune to have had all. Then there are the mourners, not of hoods, scarfs, and weepers, but of the heart-mourning a loss beyond that of the world's losses-losses no world's wealth can repair. tender, dutiful wife, the prudent, affec tionate husband, the son or daughter of our youth or of our age. The parent, dropping ripe into the lap of earth, or, deeper grief, cut off in the midst of his hopes, expectations, and pursuits, leaving perhaps a young family slenderly provided for, or nat at all; the attached and long-esteemed friend, the woman we loved, or could have loved. These are the griefs, various in their expression, that, sur

the little domestic history we were favoured with by the nose-blowing little man in black.

rounding the yawning grave, pay the last sad offices to the unconscious dead; then slowly, and with downcast weeping eyes, wend slowly homewards their melancholy way.

The funerals of the great, or little people who greatly unite themselves to dust, we have no sympathies with; we cannot get near enough to see of what kind of stuff their hearts are made; mourning coaches, plumed hearses, dusky-coated mutes, and the sable pomposity of the grave, do not attract us. But we are a rare hand at ferreting out a workhouse funeral: the poor corner of a metropolitan churchyard affords us many an afternoon's melancholy entertainment. The poor talk of one another, of the dead, of their affairs, the condition of their families. There is much apparent sympathy among them; and they have no care lest their conversation should be overheard.

It was a fine summer Sabbath evening in June, and we were knocking about among the tombstones as usual, making our observations upon life and character, when our attention was arrested by a plain coffin, borne upon the shoulders of four men in black, and followed by eight chief mourners, all in decent but humble suits of sables. The chief mourners were eight children-four boys and four girls: or, to speak more correctly, three boys and three girls, with two little 'toddles,' mere infants, straggling in the rear. The eldest boy and girl might have been about fifteen and fourteen years respectively; the next, twelve and eleven; the third pair between seven and eight; the youngest, as we have said, between infaucy and childhood. The eyes of all spectators were upon the bereaved ones as they stood around the grave, yawning to receive their only parent and provider; and few were the dry eyes of those that beheld the melancholy groupthe eldest boy looking fierce and man. like, the rest weeping bitterly, save the youngest pair, looking wonderingly around, as if marvelling what all the ceremony might mean.

"Cutting funeral, that, sir;" observed a little pursy man in black who stood near us; "werry cutting funeral, indeed," repeated the little man, blowing his nose violently.

"Who are they?" we enquired, not without anticipating something like

"Horphans, sir-every one on 'em horphans; that's their mother as is a bein' buried, sir." "Indeed."

"Yes, sir; she was a 'spectable woman-highly 'spectable, indeedwerry wirtuous, poor woman, sir-paid rates and taxes in the parish for twenty year. I ought to know it; for I'm one of the overseers-I am." "I should like to hear something of the family."

"Should you, sir? Well, you shall hear; but it's a melancholy storywery melancholy, indeed. You must know, sir, there wasn't a more decenter couple in this parish than Thomas Mason and his wife, Jane -; they were well to do, and doing well; every body respected them, for they paid their way, and was civil to their customers. Well, Thomas fell in a decline, sir, and died; but he didn't die soon enough-for his sickness wasted all their substance, and the business was neglected, so the family fell into poverty: but the poor widow struggled on, and the exertions she made to maintain them little ones was really the wonder of the neighbourhood. Mr Smith,' says she to me, when I offered some relief, I won't trouble this world long, and parish money shall never cross my palm; but when I'm gone, you won't see my desolate orphans want a morsel of bread.' So, poor woman, she was right; for she soon sickened, and was bed-ridden for thirteen months; and them children, as you see a standin' 'round their mother's grave, worked themselves to an oil to keep her from the hospital-much more the workus. The girls worked all day; and boys and girls sat up all night, turn and turn about, with their poor mothershe was sorely afflicted, poor woman. Well, sir; when she died at last, our vicar went and offered his assistance, and told the children, of course, the parish would bury their mother; but that there hobstinate boy, him that's a givin' his orders, wouldn't hear of it, and blowed up the vicar for mentioning such a thing. So the vicar comes to me, and says he, Mr Smith, these here young Mason's is the oddest babies as ever I see, for they've sold their bed and all their things to

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bury their mother; let's make up a purse for them, and there's my sovereign to begin with. Says I, sir, never mind, I'll bring them right; and the parish shall bury the poor woman, so that'll be so much saved; and with that I goes off to Poppin's court, and into the fust floor; there was the poor woman dead, and the room stripped of all the furniture and things. Says that there youth, Mr Smith,' says he, 'I'd be wery glad to see you another time, but we're in great grief for our mother bein' dead; and we hope you'll excuse us not askin' you to sit down.' Lord love you, sir, there wasn't the sign of a chair or a table in the room, nothing but the corpse, and a bit of a plank. Says I, 'my boy, I'm sorry for your grief, but I hope you wont have any objection to let the parish manage

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your poor mother's funeral.' that, sir, the boy flares up like any think, whips up a poker, and swears if he catches the parish a-comin' to touch his mother, he'll brain the lot of 'em : Mother lived without the parish,' says he, 'died without the parish, and she'll be buried without the parish!" With that he opens the door, and shews me down stairs as if he was a suckin' markis: that's the story on 'em, sir; and they're a riggler hinde pendent lot as ever I see. God help them, poor things!"

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And with this the little man blew his nose once more, as the group of motherless children, reformed in their sad order of procession, and with streaming eyes, and many repeated last looks at their mother's grave, departed to their naked home.

THE STOMACHS OF LONDON.

About a month or two ago we gave the patient reader the slip-it was at Smithfield Bars, on a busy market morning. There is much to see, and something it may be to smell in Smithfield on a market morning. Its penned thousands of Liecesters, South Downs, and Merinos-its countless thousands of fatted swine-its multitudes of bleating lambs, pretty dears, so soon to be swallowed with mint sauce, salad, and the usual et ceteras-its streets of living oxen, whose broad backs form a level leathery floor, over which you often see adventurous drovers, stick in hand, take their desperate way. Corpulent graziers, with leathern pocket-book crammed with bank of England notes: enterprizing knackers, wholesale dealers in that favourite article of food-horse flesh, subsequently retailed to the lieges in à la mode beef, mutton pies, sausages, and a variety of other fancy costumes: lynx-eyed salesmen, who have but to glance at a beast to know how many stone he weighs, offal inclusive: journey men butchers looking for a job: policemen on the scent after a roving pick pocket: chaw bacons in smockfrocks, munching bread and cheese, or gazing listlessly around from the secure eminence of a waggon-load of hay shepherds and drovers from all quarters of the agricultural world, and you have a morning at Smith

field.

Truly, ravenous reader, it is a good

ly stomach that same Smithfield; like our own, empty as a gallipot the greater part of the week, but filled even to repletion upon market days. In our case, you will understand market day to be that when some hospitable Christian, pitying our forlorn condition, delights our ears, warming the cockles of our heart with a provoke; when, be assured, we eat and drink indictively, like an author at his publisher's!

Take

The shepherds and their dogs, we delight to contemplate. Strictly speaking, there is nothing Arcadian about either master or colley-both are the roughest-looking creatures you ever beheld; but there is something about the physiognomy of shepherds that interests and pleases us a dreamy look, such as poets may wear, the result most likely of a lone life upon the hills, and much more companionship with nature than with man. that tall, erect fellow, for example, leaning against the rails where are penned some ten score of black cattle; even if you overlook his plaided scarf, there is enough of nationality in his ample forehead, skirted by thin sandy hair, his clear azure eye, and high cheekbones, to assure you he is a descendant of the Picts. He has no pipe, like your British shepherd, but applies the "sneeshin-mull" ever and anon to his proboscis. His dog, queer frizzly beast, but no more a bumpkin than his master, sits, taking unwonted

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