The total population of the establishment is no less than 5,000, comprising as it does some 800 employés, 1,500 lunatics, and nearly 3,600 patients, old or infirm. The annual expenses amount to nearly two million francs. Within the precincts of La Salpêtrière the visitor might fancy himself in a small town. There is a church, a letter box, a tobacco shop, a butcher’s shop, warehouses, wash-houses, and a market, or rather bazaar, where all sorts of goods are retailed, such as fruit, vegetables, sweetmeats, and pastry; there are streets named after the establishments to which they lead--Laundry Street, Kitchen Street, Church Street, and so on; there are large promenades and pretty gardens, together with courts, squares, and “places” bearing the illustrious name of a founder, a benefactress, a physician, or a saint immortalised by charity. This vast community of indigence and madness is under the control of the general administration of Public Assistance. The local management is in the hands of a director, assisted by a steward and eleven clerks. The medical officers are seven in number, five for the insane and two for the infirm; not to mention a surgeon, a dispensing chemist, and other medical assistants. The religious services are conducted according both to the Catholic and the Protestant ritual. The staff of female attendants is divided up into superintendents, under-superintendents, household servants, etc. The superintendents and under-superintendents wear a black uniform, severe but in good taste. They are women carefully chosen, able, devoted, of tried zeal, benevolent character, and not infrequently of mental culture. Before the principal entrance to La Salpêtrière, looking towards the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, is a more or less triangular open space, which, almost deserted during five days of the week, is animated and noisy like a fair every Thursday and Sunday between the hours of twelve and four; for the public is then admitted to see the inmates, and the wandering dealers have assembled in order to sell presents for the unfortunate patients. The two porters of the establishment have on these days enough to do, since the number of visitors averages from 1,200 to 3,000. Before entering the hospital the church is worthy of observation. Louis XIV. ordered it to be built in December, 1669, and it was constructed by the celebrated architect, Levau. It is of octagonal form, and like the ancient basilicas, of which the model is preserved by the Greek Church in Russia and elsewhere, it is surmounted by five cupolas: a central one, beneath which stands the high altar, and four lateral ones covering an equal number of chapels.