It may be remarked that though a large number of cases are received during each year, the very fact of contributions being made by the patients themselves, who are thus relieved from the sense of utter dependence, appears to have prevented the Institution from receiving as large a degree of public support as it might command if it were an ordinary charity. This is to be lamented, for the Institution is, after all, less a hospital {162} than a temporary home, and it appeals on behalf of a peculiar form of distress, the claims of which are of a specific and none the less of a very urgent character. But in order to realise the kind of work that is most needed, and is here being accomplished, let us pay a visit to the house itself. We have been hitherto standing on the broad flight of steps inside the tall iron gates, and have hesitated to sully their hearthstone purity, for it is Saturday, and we may well have an inconvenient sense that the short hand of the clock is already close to the dinner-time of the institution. With a long experience of paying unexpected visits, I am prepared to encounter remonstrance, even though it only take the form of a critical glance at my boots as a means of possible maculation of the newly-cleaned hall and passages. Conscious of having judiciously employed a member of the shoe-black brigade, I can endure this scrutiny, and, with a few words of explanation, am conducted, by the matron herself, over the grand old house, whose broad staircase and elaborately carved balusters of black oak at once attest not only its antiquity but also its aristocracy. I have already said that there is nothing here on which to found a "picturesque description," and yet the air of repose, the sense of almost spotless cleanliness, the freshness of the large lofty rooms containing from three to five or six comfortable beds with their snowy counterpanes, the general order and pleasant seclusion, are remarkably suggestive of the intention of the place. Two of the patients, to whom I make my respects, are not yet sufficiently recovered to join the daily dinner-party in the neat dining-room. One of them, an elderly lady, who has only just been brought here, is slowly recovering from very severe illness, and cannot {163} even sit up in the bed, whence she regards me with an expression which seems to intimate that she has reached a haven of rest. Her companion, a young woman—also in bed in the same room—is sitting very upright, cheerfully engaged in some problem of needlework, and responds with a hopeful smile to the declaration of the matron, that they "mean to make a woman of her if she is good."