No large establishment in the nature of a hospital or a refuge affords the kind of help for such distress as theirs. They cannot be dealt with as occupants of wards; for they have either recovered from the actual crisis of some serious disorder, or are pining in a depressed condition to which no definite name can be given to classify it for {159} admission to any public establishment for the cure of disease. To many of them the idea of entering a large charitable refuge—and I know of none in London adapted to such needs as theirs—would be repulsive, as suggesting that horror with which persons even of a lower grade regard the union workhouse; what they need is a temporary home, and if ever the time should come when a well-supported scheme for such a provision should be adopted, it will have to take the form of what is now known as the "cottage system." Indeed, in hospitals, as well as in other large charitable institutions, the defects of the old plan of maintaining a great number of adult persons in one vast building have been recognised. The immense ward with its long rows of beds, the divided and necessarily confusing duties of attendants, the ill-served meals at a great dinner-table where there is no possibility of escaping from a too rigid routine, the depressing, not to say degrading, influence, resulting from the loss of individuality, would make any vast institution for convalescents or invalids far less effectual in its operation. I make this reference only with regard to the probable inauguration of homes for invalid women in or near London, and because I have just visited one, which, although it is not on the cottage system, but is established in a rare old mansion of the period of Queen Anne, has yet the happy characteristic of being a family whose scanty means is largely increased by loving gifts, instead of an institution every corner of which bears a reminder that it is "supported by charity." In the pleasant airy High Street of Stoke Newington, and within a stone's throw of the famous Cedar Walk of Abney Park—that locality made famous by the prolonged visit of Dr. Watts, who went to spend a week with Sir {160} Thomas Abney, and remained for the rest of his long blameless life the honoured guest of the family—is the house I speak of, "The Invalid Asylum for Respectable Females in London and its Vicinity," superintended by a ladies' committee, and with weekly visitors, and a matron to carry on the practical work of the executive.