Coming into a broader roadway, and passing through the gate of a lodge, we come almost suddenly upon a glorious sloping lawn, adorned with goodly trees, worthy of the great building—meant for a ducal residence, and now put to nobler uses—which, for all its stately look, has about it a home-likeness that is full of promise. Even the matchless landscape lying around it—the expanse of wood and dale, the soft slopes of Surrey hills, the deep-embowered glades where the bronze-and-gold of moving tree-tops takes a changeful sheen from slowly-drifting clouds, or reflects strange gleams of colour from the glistening silver of the rain—will not hold us from the nearer glow of windows bright with flowers, which give a festal look to the place, although it is so quiet that we stand and imagine for a moment what it is that we have come to see. For this great mansion, with its long rows of windows and wide-spreading wings, is the home of a hundred and fifty-four men and women, some of whom have been suddenly stricken down, others having slowly fallen day by day into a condition of incurable disease, and, in many cases, also into a condition of utter bodily helplessness. They, and the attendants {169} whose constant kindly services are essential for their relief, constitute the family of what is known, plainly enough, as "The Royal Hospital for Incurables." There are no distinctions among its members, though in their previous lives they have belonged to various grades—no distinctions, at least, except those which arise from personal qualifications. The claim for election to the benefits of the charity is the necessity which is implied in the name of the institution itself: and once within its sheltering walls the patients, whose failing eyes brighten, and whose wan cheeks flush with every loving mention of it as their home, are all alike sharers in its benefits. Not only the 154 at present within its walls, however, but 327 of those who, having family and friends with whom to dwell, receive pensions of £20 a year each, and so cease to be a heavy burden to others. Do you think at first sight, and from the external appearance of the building, that charity here has gone beyond precedent in providing such a place—a palatial pile standing amidst scenery that one might well come far to see? Remember what is the need of those who have to be lifted out of the dark, hopeless depths of what is almost despair; of those who, finding themselves banished from hospital wards, unable to earn their bread, feeling themselves a burden upon those for whom they would almost consent to die rather than live upon their poverty; of those who, in the midst of hourly pain, have the mental anguish of knowing that the long calendar of darkening days may find them utterly dependent on the toil of others most dear to them, and whose few expedients can bring little ease, and will not serve to hide the ever-present sense of disappointment and distress.