HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN.

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fact, the great majority of those who had taken advantage of the institution-would, but for it, have been the inmates of a workhouse, or dependent on parochial relief."

From the ear turn we to the eye, and give some statistics from the tables of the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital:

"Since the year 1817, to the 1st of January, 1854, 98,859 persons have availed themselves of the benefits of this charity of these, 2137 have been restored to sight by operations for cataract and the formation of an artificial pupil; the appearance of 4298 persons has been altogether improved by the operation for the removal of squinting; 5659 persons have been admitted to its benefits during the past year, of whom 137 were in-patients. Of the principal operations during 1853, 88 were for cataract, 12 for the formation of an artificial pupil, 167 were for squinting, and 180 others for various complaints. Of the operations for cataract and artificial pupil, 3 failed the remainder obtaining, some a reasonable, and others an excellent sight."

The last description we shall quote is taken from a paper forwarded with the report of the Infirmary, Great Ormond Street, entitled "A Visit to the Hospital for Sick Children,” and originally published in a monthly contemporary.

"In these days of restless philanthropy, when it has become a pleasure to explore each weakness of the system-a luxury to suggest some specific, or to advocate some nostrum, it need excite no surprise that there should exist an hospital for sick children. The wonder, indeed, is rather that such a name should have to our ears an unfamiliar sound: that it should have been reserved for some benevolent individuals in our own days to hit such a charitable blot to fill up such a social deficiency.

"In every principal city in Europe, from Paris to Constantinople, from Hamburg to Moscow, such an institution may be found; across the Atlantic, in the United States of America, a hospital for children is no novelty. In England alone, the sick children of the poor have been left uncared for and untended,―jumbled up in large and public wards with rough men and peevish old women, or allowed to perish, without a hope of rescue, in their miserable dwellingsat once the cause and the fomenter of disease.

"Was such an hospital required in London? Does sickness prevail to any extent among young people? Are there diseases almost peculiar to them? Listen to the answer of the Registrar-General !— In the year 1846 (and this was no exceptional year), out of about 50,000 persons who died in the metropolis, upwards of 15,000 were less than two, and more than 21,000 under ten years of age. To illustrate the same fact in a different manner :-Out of every 100 persons born in London, 35 die before they reach the age of ten. Is such a mortality natural? Is it a fatal necessity, a normal con

dition of human existence? We cannot say so, when we find that there existed in London only one dispensary for the special treatment of the diseases of children; when we learn that the number of children received into the general hospitals is so small, that on an enumeration of the population of these institutions made in 1843, they were found to contain only 136 children under ten years of age. Of this small number, too, only 26, or less than one per cent., had been admitted for the cure of any internal disease. We may add, for the sake of comparison, that while 23 of these 26 were children between the ages of three and ten years, the total mortality between these ages in 1842, amounted in the metropolis to 33,748."

After furnishing many details of much interest, which space alone prevents us from copying, the visitor reaches the first ward of the hospital.

"The coup d'œil on entering is really striking. A suite of lofty rooms with richly-decorated ceilings, pleasant to the eyes of the sick children—the walls painted in panel, with coloured nymphs and rosy cupids sporting about,-the large fire-places, with massive and highly-carved marble chimney-pieces, all give to the place an appearance of stately but cheerful magnificence. Against the walls, instead of chairs or couches, are ranged the clean-looking light iron cribs, with moveable sides, occupied by the little patients. Strewed about the floor, on the mantel-pieces, on the beds, are toys of the newest and gayest fashion, the gift of many a kind-hearted lady. In the centre of the room a lilliputian table, with low benches, suited to the little occupants: here and there a diminutive American rocking-chair, lolled in, perchance, in a consequential way by some smiling sufferer. Across the cribs, for those patients who are prevented from rising, is fitted a wooden shelf, on which the toys may be placed, or the picture-book be rested. There was nothing sad here; nothing inappropriate; all showed good thought and good judgment. Ventilation is amply provided for by the double perforated glass windows; whilst a bath-room, fitted with every convenience, is at hand for the purposes of cleanliness or of cure.

"We confess that it was with some misgivings we first entered the ward. Lively recollections of noisy sounds from private nurseries, with even one invalid, made us look with apprehension to the effect of so many collected together. We were agreeably disappointed. Not a single cry greeted our entrance. The kind looks of the nurses were responded to by a gentle and confiding air on the part of the patients. Even in a moral, a disciplinary point of view, the effects produced by the hospital are most beneficial. Children who enter the wards rude, dirty and fractious, speedily, under the influence of kindness and firmness, acquire habits of order and cleanliness, habits, we may hope, which will prove of lasting benefit to them.

"In a corner bed, placed apart from the other children, was a very pretty girl, pale, rather wan, but with a face having a sweet and

interesting expression. On making her acquaintance, we found that one of her legs had been amputated a day or two previously, owing to incurable disease about the ankle. She was an orphan; and the timid yet gentle manner in which she related her sufferings, and expressed her gratitude for all that had been done, was perfectly affecting. With a fervent hope that the operation might prove successful, and that she might be restored to health, we passed on: and, leaving this ward, devoted exclusively to girls, we ascend another flight of stairs, and enter the boys' apartment.

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Here, of course, we no longer had the rich decorations of the old drawing-rooms; but the ward is lofty and spacious, amply provided with baths, clean, and well ventilated. Still the same absence of peevishness and wailing; though, perhaps, a little more noisy merriment. Even a poor little fellow in a corner bed, with contracted limbs, who had recently undergone some operation for their cure, was busily engaged in solving an abstruse architectural problem with wooden bricks, to the wonder and amusement of a boy near him, who appeared to have only one eye, but who made the best use of that one, as well, indeed, as of his tongue. Sculling himself along the floor, in a new-fashioned kind of go-cart, was another young gentleman, progressing much to his own satisfaction, and to the intense delight of a small circle of patients, who were watching his progress with as much interest as if they had heavy stakes depending on the result."

ART. III.-1. The British Jews. By the Rev. JOHN MILLS. London: 1853.

2. The Forty-fifth Report of the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, &c. 1853.

3. British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews. Report of the Committee presented at the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Society, &c. 1853.

THE evidences of Christianity are admirably varied. History, philology, archæology, miracles, prophecy, internal coincidences, all add to the strength of the impregnable rampart which girds our faith. And the Jews are its living evidences.

Nearly eighteen centuries have now passed away since this remarkable people were driven from their native land, and yet they are still a distinct race. The Paganism of Greece and of Rome is now but the clumsy plaything of poetry. Islamism has reared its crescent on the sunny hills of Spain, and has left the ruined halls of the Alhambra as its mausoleum; Arianism has flooded the fields of Christianity like a

summer torrent, but its bed has long been bare and dry; Fanaticism has planted its dark-hued standard in many a region where the very name which it assumed is now almost, if not altogether, unknown; but Judaism still retains its stubborn footing amidst the most powerful nations and the most aggressive creeds of the world. The devotee of Apis is a swaddled mummy; the Assyrian exists but in his mystic sculptures; the star-gazing Chaldee has utterly perished; the imaginative Greek and his dreams of Olympus, and the stern Roman, a fit emblem of his own god of war, are both no more, save on the page of history; but the Jew survives, and he is a Jew still. The Goth, the Hun, the Saxon, the Dane, the Norman, the Moor of Spain, the Indian of North Eastern America, where is he and where is his religion? But where is the Jew?

War, massacre, banishment, confiscation, torture, the stake, have all failed to extirpate either him or his faith. He speaks the language of those with whom he dwells, but he repudiates their religion and their alliance. He is a stranger, not a settler-a guest, not a member of the family. Surely there is something suggestive in this isolation, and more than ordinary causes must have been at work to effect it.

But let us take a glimpse at some of those peculiarities which characterise the domestic, the social, and the religious life of the Jew, confining ourselves to those facts which are prominent and curious. Our chief source for these facts will be the work of Mr. Mills, but we shall insert a few additions and elucidations obtained elsewhere. And here we must put in a caveat, lest the reader should conclude that Judaism is throughout a tissue of absurdities. Our mode of procedure has great advantages, but it has this drawback, that it compels us to pass by much that is admirable and worthy of imitation.

Judaism has not escaped the evils of division. Its two great communities are the Sephardim, or Spanish and Portuguese, and the Ashkenazim, or German and Polish Jews. The Sephardim claim descent from the tribe of Judah, and may be styled the Jewish aristocracy: they reside chiefly in London. The Ashkenazim settle in any place where the hope of gain attracts them.

In describing the domestic, we shall necessarily trench upon the religious life of the Jew, for the two are often inseparable. Indeed this intermixture takes place, probably, in every system of religion.

We will commence with infancy. It is a general rule

THE RITE OF CIRCUMCISION.

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though not without exceptions-that every male child should be circumcised when eight days old. Sandakin, a kind of sponsors, are chosen ; a sacred name is given, which may be distinct from that of every day life; and a mohel, or circumciser, is engaged. On the Friday which precedes the circumcision, the birth of the child is announced in the synagogue, and after the service has ended an entertainment is given to a few friends. At the time appointed-if the rite is not performed at home-the child is brought by the female sponsor to the door of the synagogue, and is there received by the male sandak. As he advances with the child the congregation says, "Blessed is he that cometh.” It is deemed meritorious to assist in this rite, and a relative of the child is uniformly called on to take an important part in it, among his duties, one is to hold two glasses of wine for the use of the mohel. A large two-seated chair stands in the midst— one seat for the sandak, and another for Elijah, "the angel of the covenant," who is believed to be an invisible witness of what is passing. There is on this subject a curious story in the treatise "Maaseh." A certain wealthy Jew of Ratisbon had engaged a man of distinguished sanctity, the Rabbi Judah to be the Sandak, or Baal Bris, of his child. But Rabbi Judah made none of the preliminary responses, and being asked why, he replied that Elijah was not present, and that the reason of his absence was that he foresaw the future apostasy of the child.* After the completion of the rite the mohel holds the child in his arms and offers a prayer, dipping his little finger thrice into one of the glasses of wine during this part of the ceremony, and afterwards placing it in the child's mouth, and saying at the same time certain words about the longevity of the infant. Offerings are now made for the poor. The sandak returns the child to his female co-partner, who is standing at the door, as females are not allowed to be present. He then congratulates the father, and entertains the party at a breakfast. Should the child die before the eighth day, the rite is performed in an irregular way with a piece of glass. A mohel, who has circumcised as many children as make up the numerical value of the letters in his name, is generally believed to be entitled to peculiar happiness in the next world.

If the male infant be the first-born of its mother, it is redeemed when thirty days old, unless it be the child of a

*Stehelin's Traditions of the Jews, vol. ii. p. 333.