operates with many other little arrangements to perpetuate the lodger. bankrupt, and cheat, of Barkington. He has wasted his own money, and now covets his neighbour's and his son's. He had me entrapped here on my wedding-day, to get hold of my money, and rob me of her I love. I appeal to you, sir, to discharge me; or, if you have not so much confidence in your own judgment as to do that, then I demand a commission of lunacy and a public inquiry." Dr. Bailey said, "That would be a most undesirable exposure, both to yourself and your friends." (Formula.) "It is only the guilty who fear the light, sir," was the swift reply. Mr. Tollett said he thought the patient had a legal right to a commission of lunacy if there was property, and he took note of the application. He then asked Alfred if he had any complaint to make of the food, the beds, or the attendants. Silverton Grove in particular was supplied with the grotesque in dress from an inexhaustible source; whenever money was sent Baker to buy a patient a suit, he went from his lunacy shop to his pawnbroker's, dived headlong into unredeemed pledges, dressed his patient as gentlemen are dressed to reside in cherry-trees; and pocketed five hundred per cent on the double transaction. Now Alfred had already observed that many of the patients looked madder than they were-thanks to short trousers and petticoats, holey gloves, ear-cutting shirt-collars, frilled bosoms, shoes made for, and declined by, the very infantry; coats short in the waist and long in the sleeves, coalscuttle bonnets, and grandmaternal caps. So he made his toilet with care, and put his best hat on to hide his shaven crown. He then kept his door ajar, and waited for a chance of speaking to the justices. One soon came; a portly old gentleman, with a rubicund face and honest eye, walked slowly along the corridor, looking as wise as he could, cringed on by Cooper and Dr. Bailey; the latter had arrived post haste, and Baker had been sent "I admit nothing of the kind, sir. I merely for. Alfred came out, touched his hat respectfully, decline to encumber your memory with petty inand begged a private interview with the magis-juries, when you are good enough to inquire into trate. The old gentleman bowed politely, for a monstrous one." Alfred's dress, address, and countenance, left no suspicion of insanity possible in an unprejudiced mind. But the doctor whispered in his ear, "Take care, sir. Dangerous!" Now this is one of the most effective of the formulæ in a private asylum. How can an inexperienced stranger know for certain that such a statement is a falsehood? and even the just do not love justice—to others—quite so well as they love their own skins. So Squire Tollett very | naturally declined a private interview with Alfred; and even drew back a step, and felt uneasy at being so near him. Alfred implored him not to be imposed upon. An honest man does not whisper," said he. "Do not let him poison your mind against me; on my honour I am as sane as you are, and he knows it. Pray, pray use your own eyes, and ears, sir, and give yourself a chance of discovering the truth in this stronghold of lies." "Don't excite yourself, Mr. Hardie," put in the doctor, parentally. (Formula.) Sir," said Alfred, "I leave those complaints to the insane ones: with me the gigantic wrong drives out the petty worries. I cannot feel my stings for my deep wound." "Oh, then, you admit you are not treated unkindly here?" "Now that is very sensible and considerate," said Mr. Tollett. "I will see you, sir, again before we leave." With this promise Alfred was obliged to be content. He retired respectfully, and the justice said, "He seems as sane as I am." The doctor smiled. The justice observed it, and not aware that this smile was a formula, as much so as a prize-fighter's or a ballet-dancer's, began to doubt a little: he reflected a moment, then asked who had signed the certificates. "Very. He is my most interesting patient (formula), though terribly violent at times. Would you like to see the medical journal about him!" 66 Yes; by-and-by." "Don't you interrupt me, doctor; I am as calm as you are. Calmer; for, see, you are pale at this moment; that is with fear that your The inspection then continued; the inspector wickedness in detaining a sane man here is admired the clean sheets that covered the going to be exposed. Oh, sir," said he, turning beds, all of them dirty, some filthy; and asked to the justice, "fear no violence from me, not the more reasonable patients to speak freely and even angry words; my misery is too deep for say if they had any complaint to make. This irritation, or excitement. I am an Oxford man, | question being with the usual sagacity of public sir, a prize man, an Ireland scholar. But, unfor-inspectors put in the presence of Cooper and tunately for me, my mother left me ten thousand the doctor, who stuck to Tollett like wax, the pounds, and a heart. I love a lady, whose name I will not pollute by mentioning it in this den of thieves. My father is the well-known banker, mad people all declared they were very kindly treated: the reason they were so unanimous was this; they knew by experience that, if they told "I mustn't; I mustn't. In the noisy ward. There, run." And run he did. Alfred was lucky enough to get safe into the noisy ward without being intercepted, and then he encountered a sunburnt gentleman, under thirty, in a riding-coat, with a hunting-whip in his hand it was Mr. Vane, a Tory squire and large landowner in the county. Now, as Alfred entered at one door, Baker himself came in at the other, and they nearly met at Vane. But Alfred saluted him first, and begged respectfully for an interview. "Certainly, sir," said Mr. Vane. "Take care, sir; he is dangerous," whispered Meantime, Alfred had a misgiving. The plau-Baker. sible doctor had now Squire Tollett's ear, and Tollett was old, and something about him reminded the Oxonian of a trait his friend Horace had detected in old age: Vel quòd res omnes timidé gelidé que ministrat. a He knew there was another justice in the house, but he knew also he should not be allowed to get speech with him, if by cunning or force it could be prevented. He kept his door ajar. Presently Nurse Hannah came bustling along with an apronful of things, and let herself into a vacant room hard by. This Hannah was young woman with a pretty and rather babyish face, diversified by a thick biceps muscle in her arm that a blacksmith need not have blushed for. And I suspect it was this masculine charm, and not her feminine features, that had won her the confidence of Baker and Co. and the respect of his female patients; big or little, excited or not excited, there was not one of them this bicipital baby-face could not pin by the wrists, and twist her helpless into a strong-room, or handcuff her unaided in a moment; and she did it too, on slight provocation. Nurse Hannah seldom came into Alfred's part of the house; but, when she did meet him, she generally gave him a kind look in passing and he had resolved to speak to her, and try if he could touch her conscience, or move her pity. He saw what she was at, but was too politic to detect her openly and irritate her. He drew back a step, and said softly, “Nurse Hannah! Are you there ?" "Yes I am here," said she sharply, and came out of the room hastily; and shut it. "What do you want, sir ?" Alfred clasped his hands together. "If you are a woman, have pity on me.' She was taken by surprise. "What can I do?" said she in some agitation. "I am only a servant." At least tell me where I can find the Visiting Justice, before the keepers stop me." "Hush! Speak lower," said Hannah. "You hare complained to one, haven't you?" "Yes. But he seems a feeble old fogy. Where is the other? Oh, pray tell me." Instantly Mr. Vane's countenance changed. But this time Alfred overheard the formula, and said quietly: "Don't believe him, sir. I am not dangerous; I am as sane as any man in England. Pray examine me, and judge for yourself." 66 Ah, that is his delusion," said Baker. "Come, Mr. Hardie, I allow you great liberties. but you abuse them. You really must not monopolise his Worship with your fancies. Consider, sir, you are not the only patient he has to examine." Alfred's heart sank; he turned a look of silent agony on Mr. Vane. Mr. Vane, either touched by that look, or irritated by Baker's pragmatical interference, or perhaps both, looked that person coolly in the face, and said sternly: "Hold your tongue, sir; and let the gentleman speak to me." SOMETHING TO BE DONE IN INDIA. THERE is a very fine opening in India for a government that wants something to do. Rather more than four years ago, a commission was appointed to inquire into the extent, nature, and causes, of the mortality of British Indian soldiers. The late Lord Herbert was its first chairman, and his successor was Lord Stanley. of the India House, and required of every Indian The commission examined all available statistics station, from its commanding, engineering, and medical officers, answers to a series of printed as far as possible exhausted; and the rate of questions. Every source of information was nation, is enormous, while its causes are unmortality, miserable in itself and costly to the mistakable and nearly all removable. The evidence cries aloud for the saving of the lives of a hundred and forty officers, and about four regiments of men, who die every year in India over and above the fair average mortality. An army of seventy thousand men in India keeps nearly six thousand beds constantly full of sick, and loses yearly by death four thousand eight hundred and thirty men, or nearly five regiments. Fever is the immediate cause of half the sickness, and of about a fourth part of the deaths. But what causes the fevers? Next to fever, dysentery is most common, and it is more fatal. But what causes the dysentery? Diseases of the liver prevail; they are, when acute, so fatal, that the chance of death is greater from one such attack than from thirteen attacks of fever. But why is there so much liver disease? As fatal as liver disease is cholera, each causing about a tenth of all the deaths. But whence the scourge of cholera? The cost of an English soldier in India is a little more than a hundred pounds a year, so that the five thousand eight hundred and eighty men who are always sick, cost five hundred and eighty-eight thousand a year spent for no return, of which-deducting the inevitable sicknesssome four hundred thousand is the cost of keeping men in an avoidable state of inefficiency and suffering. Of two thousand eight hundred and seventy-six officers who died in India during twenty years, and who would NOT have died according to the rate of mortality in the home army, only one hundred and twenty-two were killed in the field or died of wounds. The common soldier's chance of life is much worse than the officer's, though both are exposed to precisely the same Indian climate. Take an imaginary army of that number of young men, all of the age of nineteen, which at home would dwindle by the usual average of deaths in eleven years to thirty thousand four hundred and fifty-three men. Such an army in India, dwindling according to the rate of death in Indian officers, would sink in the eleven years to twenty-four thousand six hundred and ten, and if the men died as fast as English common soldiers die in India, its number at the end of eleven years would be only nineteen thousand six hundred and seventeen. For, the officers live in detached bungalows under wholesomer conditions than those which have been hitherto provided for the soldiers in their barracks. As for the English civil servants in India, scattered about in homes of their own, and furnished with some little occupation for their minds;-while the mortality in the army of India has for years been sixty-nine in the thousand (the mortality in England of men at the soldier's age being not sixty-nine, but nine in a thousand), that in the Indian civil service has not exceeded twenty or thirty in the thousand. For ninety years only one governor-general (Lord Cornwallis) died at his post; and although the last two died in harness, yet the fourteen who have held office-for an average of six years each-since seventeen 'seventy-two, filled their expected number of years by the English life-table. We are not, therefore, to say, "Oh, the climate!" and look listlessly on at the swift work of the gravediggers' spades about the Indian barracks. In India, as elsewhere, men sicken and perish more or less, in proportion to the wholesomeness of the conditions in which they are placed. And the simple fact expressed beyond all question by the two bulky blue-books which contain the evidence collected by the commission on the sanitary state of the Indian army, books closely printed upon twelve pounds' weight of paper, is that the very rudiments of sanitary knowledge have not yet been applied to the construction of our Indian army stations. The whole body of stational reports was submitted to Miss Nightingale for any comment that might be suggested by her experience. Her comment, which forms part of the bluebook, and has also been published separately, is, that the diseases, and their causes, in the Indian stations, are just those of ill-managed camps, and that even the sites of stations have been often chosen with as little regard to health, as has been shown usually in the pitching of camps. With her own rare earnest energy in speaking home upon such matters, she extracts the bitter truth from all the verbiage of the reporters,-that with bad water supply, bad drainage, filthy surrounding bazaars, want of ventilation, overcrowding in barrack and sick-wards, ill-planned hospitals, a daily government supply of raw spirits, unintelligent supply of food, and a nearly total want of occupation, it is rather a wonder that so many soldiers live. As to water-supply, the usual pipes are the native men called bleesties, who draw it where they like, and bring it on their backs in skins. Sometimes the surface-drainage is gathered in tanks; and when one has learnt how the undrained earth is polluted, it seems hardly necessary to look further for causes of dysentery and cholera. Hyderabad says that no doubt its water "swarms with animal life." Chunar's water is "clear and sweet if allowed to settle before it is drunk." Agra's is "laxative," and "apt to disagree at first." Hazareebaugh's tank-water, on standing, "copiously deposits," and contains "organic matter in considerable quantity;" but " persons particular about the quality of their drinking water," can obtain their supply from "several good wells." Asserghur thinks that its water "smells good." The same tank is used for drinking and bathing; but for drinking, the natives slightly "clear away the surface." A well in the native infantry lines at Secunderabad, contained a hundred and nineteen grains of solid matter to the gallon. At Bangalore, the Ulsoor tank, used for drinking, is the outlet for the whole drainage of a filthy bazaar, with a hundred and twenty-five thousand inhabitants. The commander-in-chief "The disgustingly filthy nature of the source from which the water used at Bangalore is taken, has been brought to notice scores of times by me within the last four and a half years; but, as usual, nothing has been done." Even the wells are impure from sewage. They are open, "when they get dirty they are cleaned." says, and Arrangements for washing and bathing are no better. Indian barracks and hospitals are so expensive that every man costs thirteen pounds for his proportion of the house-rent: a rate paid by not many private families for all the domestic comforts of high-rented London; and yet in these costly barracks and hospitals the elementary notion of a basin, or a bath, or a drain-pipe to carry off used water, has hardly yet been entertained. Only two stations in all IndiaMadras and Wellington-have anything like lavatories or baths, with proper laying on of water and proper draining off, either in bar rack or hospital. Refuse water is usually conveyed into an adjacent cesspit, where, with all other foul matter, it is expected to sink into the earth. What will not disappear by soakage men dip for and carry away in pails, skins, or carts, and even women carry off in jars upon their heads, to throw into some open ditch. panies: one giving comparatively pure water, the other an impure water, containing sewage matter from the Thames. In the same district, among the population supplied with the better water, the deaths by cholera were at the rate of thirty-seven in ten thousand; among those supplied with the bad water they were one hundred and thirty in ten thousand, and Dr. R. D. Thomson justly said in his report upon the sub Drainage has not yet been introduced into India. Feeble attempts made in Bombay and Madras have simply been devices for the concen-ject, Therefore I conclude that there were tration of a nuisance. At present, in fact, even destroyed by the Southwark and Vauxhall Comthe cesspit is regarded as a luxury. "The re-pany (whose water at the time was impure) two ports," says Miss Nightingale, "speak of cess- thousand five hundred persons." What can we pits as if they were dressing-rooms." Thus at expect but cholera among our troops in India? Nuneerabad and Kolapore we are told that "to each married man's quarter there is a bathingroom with cesspit." The soil at Agra will not imbibe the "fluid refuse" fast enough, for which reason "raised paths are necessary between the barracks." The earth is required to receive into itself the whole filth of the barracks and bazaars, and out of the ground thus polluted the well water is taken. In the bazaar at Nynee Tal, where men are sent for their health, the stench is at times overpowering. These bazaars grow up around every Indian military station. They consist of huts and houses in a huddled camp, and have a population always large in proportion to that of the European troops at the station. At Bangalore, there is accommodation for about seventeen hundred European and twenty-six hundred native troops. But the native population within the cantonment is a hundred and twenty-four thousand, of whom three-fourths live in the bazaar close to the European infantry barrack, and cover the ground with filth. Of the bazaars at Cawnpore, Sir Proby Cautley says: "To give the commissioners an idea of the state of these bazaars, I may mention that the natives build their huts entirely of mud dug out of holes as near as possible to the place where they build. In the Cawnpore bazaar I came upon ponds full of black mud and all sorts of filth, and the whole place was utterly unventilated, which was a very remarkable illustration of how ill-health was produced, not only in the immediate neighbourhood, but all round the place." sun. There are few terrors in the Indian climate for men who can live wholesomely. The least we can desire, is, that the mortality among the English soldiers in India shall be reduced to the same level as that among English civilians in India-that is to say, by more than one-half. The first requirements at present wholly, or almost wholly neglected, are efficient drainage and watersupply at all the stations, with washing-basins, baths, and wholesome drinking-fountains. The bazaars also, at least where they surround the cantonments, must be brought under sufficient sanitary discipline. Then again in so simple a matter as the construction of barracks, all the expenditure has been of money, for there has been none of wit. In the first place, the site is chosen without judgment. Sir Ranald Martin, who has written a valuable work on the Influence of Tropical Climates, says that in India stations have been selected without care; that " no station he has ever visited was exempt from malarious influences; that the soils are damp, the situations low and ill drained, the surface irregular, the ground jungly, and some of the stations subject to flooding." Some were in fact so deadly that they have, after much suffering and loss, been given up. More care has been taken of late years, though Sir John Lawrence observes that some are still very badly selected. But it is quite as possible to build on an unhealthy site in England as in India. The site having been chosen, or not chosen, the form of construction is the next question. This practice of pond-making, as a receptacle The common model is an extravagant enlargefor refuse matter, is common, he says, to every ment of the hut, with opposite doors protected town bazaar in India. They dig the mud for by verandahs. One or two people sleeping in a the huts close by, and do not fill in the hole small hut, according to the manner of the again. Such holes serve to receive all the filth native troops, can ensure to themselves almost of the town, where it remains exposed to the as good air within doors as without. Twenty As a bazaar becomes more populated it or thirty people in a hut, however lofty, find becomes less ventilated, and in time a mortal ventilation difficult; accidents of draught affect sore. The annual deaths at Cawnpore, chiefly the course of the foul air; it may accumufrom fever, dysentery, diarrhoea, and cholera, late at one end or over one group of beds. have been as high as ninety-one in a thousand,- But in an Indian barrack, eighty, a hundred, one man in eleven, or a very near approach to two hundred, three hundred, six hundred, sleep literal decimation. The natives, says Dr. G. C. in a single barrack-room, with usually a fair Wallich, have in point of fact " no idea of taking estimate of cubic feet per man, because the sanitary precautions. A man has no idea of rooms may be extravagantly high, but with a impurity as long as the water he defiles happens floor space to each man of no more than eight to be Ganges water." During our cholera or nine feet square. Madras has two narrow epidemic of nine years ago, Southwark and rooms, one above the other, in which sleep one Lambeth were supplied by two water com- thousand and thirty men. One of the rooms, two thousand one hundred and twenty-five feet long partly spend in the healthful work of cultivating -perhaps the longest room in the world-is gardens and producing wholesome herbs, and occupied by six hundred sleepers; but each man's fruit, and vegetables, is at almost every station allowance of sleeping room is only a space six thrown heavily upon the soldier's hands. They are feet long by six feet wide. There is pro- themselves cultivated into laziness, until they devision in these rooms for the necessary ventila-sire to have their kits carried for them by natives. tion, though no possible system of currents Except morning and evening parade, and his turn could in such rooms really secure wholesome on duty, which takes him out of bed about once air. Generally, too, these Indian dormitories are placed on the ground. Even in England, where malaria has far less power than in India, nobody sleeps on a floor touching the ground, if he can help it. The floor of the Indian dormitory usually consists of brick, or stone, or plaster, laid over the open ground. In one such room, a flagstone being lifted for some purpose, the stench rising from the ground beneath was so great that the surgeon fled. a fortnight, the English private soldier in India lies about on bed in barracks all day long, or reads a little, if he can; but only a few stations are supplied with any books; and where there is a government library, it is not lighted of evenings. Often the soldier is so well taken care of that he is forbidden to go out in the sun while it is shining, and, unless he disobey orders, he is cooped up with one, two, or three hundred others, to loll on the beds, smoke, read a bit, doze gossip, or play cards. For one man employed in an Indian barrack, six are idle; yet it is found that when men are actively engaged on field work, however hot the weather, health improves. Mortality falls in time of war, because the men get something to do. Very much depends on the good sense of the commanding officer. One will endeavour to coop up his men in hot weather, from eight in the morning until five in the evening, lest they should get sun The feeding of the Indian soldier is not regulated very much more wisely than his lodging. The old notion has been maintained in practice that dram-drinking is a safeguard against perils of the climate. The daily allowance of drink to each man is three quarts of porter; but he may take, instead of one of the quarts, a dram of spirits: or, as at Mhow, he may take only one quart of porter and two drams of spirits. Two drams of spirit are the twentieth part of a gallon. A soldier who takes his government allow-stroke; another will send them out shooting, ance, as far as he may, in spirit, consumes and find sickness thereby lessened. But as a eighteen gallons and a quarter of raw spirit general rule, "everybody," observes Miss Nightyearly, besides what he may buy in the bazaar. ingale, "seems to believe that the way of making Drinking," said Sir Charles Napier, "does not diseased livers in geese, for Strasburg pies, is give the fever, but it so inflames the liver and the best way of keeping men's lives sound, and brain, that the fever takes too firm a grasp to be of making efficient healthy soldiers for India." got rid of. Why, their ration is two drams a The majority of the recruits from Ireland and day, and eight of these drams make a quart Scotland, condemned to inactivity under a trobottle! So the sober soldier swallows one-pical summer, are said to eat many times the fourth of a bottle of raw spirits every day! You and I know them too well to doubt that the other three-fourths go down after the first." In fact, however, though there is much bad spirit bought in the bazaars, the Indian soldier usually draws from the canteen two quarts of porter and a single dram of spirit. It is creditable, under such circumstances, though bad enough in itself, that generally only one man in a hundred is a drunkard yet in some European regiments the average rises to fifteen in a hundred. In Burmah, when only malt liquor could be had, health always improved. bulk of animal food they would use in their own country, when working their hardest in the coldest season. And they drink their raw spirit and porter over and above that. The men, said Sir John Lawrence, eat meat two or three times a day all the year round, they like it, and "if they have any money you generally find that they buy bacon and pork, which is very filthy in India, being badly fed, and they thus add to the quantity of their animal food." He thought that government might try to lead the men into a liking for fruit and vegetables. "You must try," he said, truly enough, "to In the adjustment of the dietary there is, of carry the men with you." As for the soldiers' course, no recognition of the different require-gardens, his experience was, that the men would ments of the body at different seasons. Every expect to be paid for working in them. "I do day brings its pound of beef-varied twice a not think," he said, "that any Englishman likes week, if possible, with mutton-its pound of working in India." But he believed that trades bread, and its pound of vegetable, with its might be introduced; work upon clothes, modicum of salt, and of rice, and of tea or coffee, shoes, iron-work, and other wants of the reand sugar. There is no encouragement of vege-giment, so as to make the regiment more selftable diet in hot weather. The men eat their beef as cooked by the natives in aboriginal kitchens, destitute of ovens or boilers, often without a chimney. They buy bits of the filthy bazaar pig, to eat with their breakfast, and they feed their bodies, forced into dreary inactivity, on more meat than would maintain health in a labourer. The waste time which they might supporting. "The men would," he thought, The more |