E 1 3 sional sort of way. Should the corpse | pipe and an ounce of tobacco, which I gave him, and produced a match from my basket. remain where it was, or did I think the ironing board would be a better place? "The board is rather short, you see," she added, "and it wouldn't do for her head or her legs to hang over the end, would it now, nurse?" I said, "No, it wouldn't," and tried to make appropriate responses, but the stuffy room, the complacent neighbors, and the silent, rigid corpse lying before me, to gether with the utter absence of any sense of the solemnity of death, filled me with a sickening feeling of disgust. It was simply horrible. All I could do was to impress on them to have the funeral soon (they are certain to keep the corpse a week), and beg the Mrs. Gamp to use her influence with the daughter (who was out) on that point. 66 Certainly, nurse, I am quite of your mind," answered the Gamp, drawing herself up and putting herself on a pleasing equality of manner with me, whom she mistook for a professional nurse. A sense of the grim humor of it all burst over me, and I hurried away, feeling that I should begin to laugh nervously if I remained. But, as I have said, the scene has haunted me all day. December 14th. The O'Connor household is very characteristically Irish. Mrs. O'Connor is a big, middle-aged, browneyed woman with an infectious smile altogether a most accomplished old beggar. She is a widow with six children, three of whom, however, are in work; yet they live in the most abject poverty, in two tiny rooms, almost devoid of furniture, and containing one single bedstead. And the "rint," as Mrs. O'Connor took care to impress upon us, is terribly in arrears. Our patient, Patrick, the eldest son, is a fine, steady, good boy of eighteen, who brings home every penny of his wages to his mother, but has just injured his knee, which will keep him out of work for some weeks. We provided him yesterday with blanket, nightshirt, bandages, etc., for which Mrs. O'Connor effusively called down the blessings of God Almighty on our heads, but a pillow-slip which we left by mistake (there was no pillow to the bedstead!) had been pawned by her before I could call for it this morning. She is quite incorrigible. Patrick, in spite of the school board, cannot read a word, much less write, and has been at work since he was nine years old. So he finds it very dreary, tied to his bed. This morning when I went up he was all alone, and had nothing to do. I hunted up his "Thank you, sister," he said, "you're quite a mother to me," with such a bright, grateful smile that it amply repaid one for all one's trouble. December 23rd. The unbounded faith of these poor people in "the nurse" is very pathetic, and very much beyond what we deserve. Doctors they take as a matter of course, but there are comparatively so few district nurses, that we are regarded in Soho as something quite special and out of the way. Half the little children playing in the gutter seem to know us by sight, and as we pass down our usual courts and alleys, we are greeted by a small chorus of "There's nurse! Good-morning, sister! Do come and see mother, sister!" etc., etc. To-day, while calling on a poor consumptive woman aged twenty-three, and mother to five little children all under six years of age, the husband, a house-painter, consulted me about his heart, which is weak. I suggested the parish doctor as a more suitable adviser. "Oh, I know what the doctor says," answered the man; "but I should feel so much more comfortable-like, sister, if you would tell me what you think about it." And he looked quite incredulous when I assured him that prescribing treatment was quite beyond a nurse's functions. December 28th. "Any one can see you have made beds all your life, sister," said a nice, appreciative old woman to me this morning, as she glanced approvingly at the smooth, clean display of sheet and blanket before her; and although facts hardly warranted the remark, I felt quite proud of the compliment conveyed. Another patient of ours, equally grateful, but not quite so felicitous in her language, remarked patronizingly to us the other day, "that she did like to see young women making themselves useful," and wished her own pretty, helpless daughter would "turn her hand to that sort of thing." Though of a distinctly superior class to the vast majority of our patients (and hence the patronage), she was supremely unconscious that two years' hospital training are absolutely essential to fit a nurse for district work. January 3rd. The new year has brought us no diminution of work. We are both of us absorbed just now in saving the life of a little boy of four, desperately ill with inflammation of the lungs; and several times a day we toil up the steep ing hansom conveyed me home. To-day Charlie is really a tiny bit better, and we all begin to be hopeful. January 10th. Charlie's life is saved, we hope; but his recovery will be so slow that we have persuaded his parents to let him go to the Children's Hospital, where he will have every possible care. He has grown very fond of his nurses, and a faint, fleeting smile comes over his white face when we appear, and he says in a little baby whisper, "I wants my nurse to wash my hands," and holds out his hot little fingers. So this morning he was rolled up in blankets, and I carried him down-stairs, and his mother and I took him in a cab to Great Ormond Street. One of the doc. tors being a friend of mine, we were spared that terrible dreary wait in the outpatient department, and within half an hour of our arrival I had the pleasure of seeing my poor little patient safely tucked up in a clean bed in a big, airy ward, with a kind ward-sister in charge and the active nurses flitting about. And there I feel I can leave him with all confidence. stairs of one of those huge blocks of so- | feverish, and of knowing that for that called model dwellings, where hundreds of night at least the worst danger was passed. families are herded together, and where So the father being then at home, I made the courts are so deep and narrow that not my way down into the now deserted a ray of sun can ever penetrate, in which streets, and with a sense of security in my he lives with his father and mother and a nurse's dress, almost enjoyed the solitary little baby brother. They have a two-walk in the chill night air, until a passroomed dwelling, but here too the broker has been at work, and almost the only piece of furniture left is the bedstead in the tiny inner room where poor little Charlie lies, half unconscious and half delirious, throwing himself ceaselessly from side to side, and gasping out his little baby language in a broken whisper. His mother, who nurses him devotedly, is such a nice, respectable woman, quite young still, and far above her actual surroundings; but the father has been long out of work, is now a billiard-marker, and I fancy is not so steady as he should be, and hence their present misery. Yesterday afternoon Charlie's temperature was 104°, and he was so prostrate that we feared he could hardly live through the night; so, though we do not as a rule undertake night work, I promised to relieve the poor mother during the first hours, until her husband came home at one in the morning from his club. At eight o'clock last evening I took possession of the little sick-room, persuading the mother to take what rest she could on two chairs in the kitchen. Poor little Charlie was worse; he was quite unconscious, in high fever, and was never still for a moment, plucking at the sheet before him in the absent way which is such a bad symp. tom. All one could do was to keep him as quiet and covered as possible, and every ten minutes induce him to swallow a teaspoonful of milk or port wine. Then there was the steam-kettle to keep on the boil, which is by no means an easy task when the kettle is large, and the grate extremely small and devoid of a hob; and finally, to add to my responsibilities, the younger child, who for lack of any other place had been put to sleep at the foot of Charlie's bed, would wake up from time to time and join his lusty crying to his brother's plaintive moans. It was a very solemn time waiting, so to speak, for death, during those long night hours, the hush of the sick-room only broken by the shouts from the street below. Perhaps there is nothing in the world so pathetic, as the struggle of a little child for life. But death was merciful last night, and in the early hours after midnight I had the intense relief of seeing my little patient grow calmer and less January 13th. To-day, for the first time in my nursing experience, I came across a woman who took a keen interest in politics. Noticing a portrait of William O'Brien over the mantelpiece and a copy of Justice on the table, I remarked that I was sure her husband was a Radical. "Oh, we are more than Radicals, we are Socialists!" was the prompt response, and, delighted at finding an interested listener, she poured out all her Socialist views all the time I was making the bed, quite forgetting meanwhile her own aches and pains. She was a particularly favorable specimen of the self-educated woman, intelligent and self-reliant, and wonderfully well-read in her own subjects. Fortunately their Socialism has not affected the religious beliefs of either husband or wife, and they are both professing members of the Wesleyan denomination. Curiously enough, the man acts as porter to one of the Pall Mall clubs, and, anxious for the sake of a growing family of little children not to quarrel with his bread and butter, he is obliged to refrain from any active political work, which would inevitably result in his losing his situation. Let me add (for the benefit of those who believe that women, and above all working-women, should abstain from meddling in politics) that this Socialist home, though poor, was one of the cleanest and tidiest that we have yet been into, while the little bookshelf of much-treasured volumes in one corner, brought a whiff of intellectual life into the humble surroundings. Fanuary 30th. My three months' nursing has come, alas, to a close, and circumstances will not allow of my going on with the work. There are several causes which have made the time particularly interesting and valuable to me (and which I think would hold good for any one who wishes to undertake work of a similar nature). Firstly, that nursing brings you into more intimate relations with the very poor than any other work; the ordinary barriers of restraint are quickly broken down, and you thus realize the lives of the poor in their actuality. Secondly, you bring to them exactly what they need most at the time-exceptional help to meet exceptional distress. You are thus tormented neither by qualms of conscience as to the efficacy of your work, nor by fears of ultimate pauperization, as is the case with the vast majority of philanthropic enterprises. Thirdly, you distinctly teach the poor to help themselves. We almost invariably found the relations of our patients most anxious to learn how to take care of their sick; and although on our first visit we were sometimes shocked at the total want of care bestowed, we always found a very marked improvement under our tuition, and we realized that it was not indifference on the part of the people, but sheer, helpless ignorance. In the more chronic cases we invariably made a point of teaching the patient how to attend to her own requirements, and then we would call in once or twice a week, to see that our instructions were being carried out, and to keep the sufferer supplied with any necessary lint or ointment. Finally, I feel very strongly that district nursing, though very fatiguing, and necessarily somewhat rough and ready in its methods, is distinctly work that ladies, possessed of the requisite hospital training, might take up much more than they have done hitherto. It is intensely interesting; it offers endless opportunities for doing practical good, and there is no doubt that it is immensely appreciated by the poor. The work can best be done in connection with some mission or church centre, and under the guidance, more or had for MR. RUSKIN has done many great things. More than any other man, he gave impulse, direction, and moral value to the art revival of his younger days, and his share in the influences which have made the fine arts what they are among us now, remains one of the noblest and most enduring kind. And yet, although he has assuredly quickened our perception and love of landscape beauty-although he has made all the world admit the genius of one supremely great landscapepainter, it cannot be said that he has made modern painters see nature as that great artist did, or follow where he led. Shakespeare, Verulam, Turner-by the last of this mighty triad Mr. Ruskin declared that the aspect of nature - her brightness, mystery, and infinite abundance the first time been revealed to us. Surely we might have looked for some great quickening of landscape art, and at least have been confident that the recognition of its poetical and spiritual power would not be forgotten, whatever strength might be spent in ardent study of the letter of its law. No such quickening did follow. Whatever impulse was given was merged in the general pre-Raphaelite one; whatever success was gained bore little or no affinity with the special quality of Turner's work. The progress of landscape art as he understood it has, in fact, been arrested since his death. It would almost seem as if it had been felt by his successors that those shining fields of light of his had never been really won, or that they were but dreams, and that the solid earth never dissolved, under any magic of light and air, into the "unsubstantial fairy place which he said it very often did. Now a spirit of verification, due to a shade of doubt whether the genius of a great composer had not yielded itself too unreservedly to its own impulses, and so only just escaped extravagance, would have had much to say for itself, but we have little reason to believe that any such spirit animated Turner's immediate suc- Figures, perhaps masses and crowds of cessors. They admired, but they did not them, man's handiwork, and things belongstudy him, or believe in, or try to discovering to man, boats, buildings, cattle, and his principles of work. They did not seek the like, may almost fill up the picture, for light or allow nature's resplendent but they will be seen to form, as landcolors to dazzle and perplex them. Time scape materials, parts of a scheme which went on, and it became apparent that shows them all embraced in the mighty landscape art as Turner, and a band of whole of nature, and all dependent on less distinguished artists both in oil and great natural forces, helped by them, overwatercolor of his date, understood it, had come by them, rejoicing in them, or strug. somehow lost its power over us, and that gling with them, but never escaping from that which holds our affections now, how-them. The drama of nature as a whole, ever powerful, brilliant, or accurate, is different both in form and spirit. including man, is surely wide and varied enough, and the scheme I speak of will have formed itself in the artist's mind according to the measure of his sympathies; but he will be no landscape-painter in the central meaning of the word if it is not the life and power, calm, beautiful, or terrible, of nature which he makes really paramount in his work, and the strong affection which can do this will give its own life to the likeness of wildest glen or Landscape-painting, however, is a name given to a large range of many kinds of work; and it may be well, before proceeding further, for me to say what kind I take to represent the central idea or principle of it, as distinguished from kinds in which, on the one hand, it is almost merged into the higher interest of figure-painting, and on the other, only just serves to animate what we may perhaps call the "still-life "dreariest shore. of picturesque nature. Not that it matters much how we classify our pictures. One class will always gradate itself into another, and the rough division, according to the kind of objects which come foremost or occupy most space on the canvas, serves all practical purposes. Nor is it easy to do much more than this. Turner did not distinguish himself, as regards power of logical division, in the classification of his "Liber" subjects. Certainly man and his works enter largely into pictures which we never think of calling anything but landscapes. In fact, nature without human interest is apt to be dull, and grand scenes of lifeless solitude are well known to be trying to any artist's power of picture-making. The enchantment of Airy tongues which syllable men's names A landscape picture, most properly so called, is a representation of some passage of nature which makes us feel that the painter has used all means at his command to give form and shape to the feeling of beauty, or some other quality which that passage of nature has excited in him. Human interest may have contributed much or little to the power and character of that impression. The artist's shaping faculty will have accepted, arranged, or rejected, for the most and best part by feeling alone, and though there are cases in which the dividing-line between pictures which may be called landscapes and others which will be described and classed together as idyllic pictures, is almost lost, the hold which large, all-embracing sympathy with nature has kept in his mind, as expressed in the design or composition of his picture, will show, if we care for the distinction, to which class the picture the wonderful sense of wizardry in perfect | belongs. loneliness which these lines convey is A good picture is a good picture in beyond the range of the greatest painter whatever class we place it, but the disof landscape desolation. And yet such tinction is not without interest and imdesolation is, and doubtless always will portance for all that. Good landscapes, be, painted as well as scenes in which in the sense Turner, Cox, or Linnell gave human interest would seem to overpower the word, are few; very good ones, inevery other. One quality, however, we deed, in other senses, are happily not rare. feel, by a very little thought, to be essen- However much I rejoice in the latter, I tial to all forms of what we call landscape- regret the former fact, and certainly bepainting in its highest sense-namely, a lieve that the confusion between the landcertain strong sympathy with natural scape properly so called and what I forces and phenomena, those of light and venture to call the idyllic landscape is atmosphere especially, which insists on mistaken and injurious injurious were it having its own expression at any cost, as only for this: that it makes us lose sight against all other elements of the picture. of or feel comparatively small interest in and the life and grace of imaginative truth. is a true landscape. Its title tells us what the painter enjoyed and intended us to enjoy. His figures form part of a scheme which in color unites them, cart, horses, and all, with the morning light, and in form with the leafless trees; with the line of distance itself cunningly linked to the hedgerow and cart by spaces and depressions and with the lines of hoar-frost on the ground. It will be seen at once that this is done at the cost of perfect and elaborate likeness of figures and horses. They tell their story, we are content with them exactly where they are, but they would strike us as dolls and toy horses if every touch of them did not fit into the landscape design. Indeed, the shapes to which the stress of composition made Turner reduce the human form as well as that of many a less noble animal are often ridiculous if we choose to look at them apart from the rest of the picture; but that is just what we do not choose; and if we did, and possessed any true landscape feeling, we should only feel with Mr. Ruskin that we should be sorry to see them better. the development and progress of the art first named. Other varieties of landscape exist, from the honest and most honorable Now the figures in Turner's "Frosty study of a "bit" of nature, to the tran- Morning" are, I think, as large relatively script, done with an ability which excites to the whole picture as those in Walker's our admiration and demands our gratitude," Ploughing;" but the "Frosty Morning" of one of her grandest scenes; but it is with pictures of the idyllic class and their allies that I wish to deal now. I maintain that, however important both in scale and in meaning, and however perfect in painting, the landscape portion of such pic tures may be, that landscape portion is not felt, designed, and painted as it would have been if it had been brought into existence on canvas for the landscape's own sake; that the very ease with which in the hands of a great figure-painter, trained in all arts of design, the beauty and the poetical charm of landscape can be made to play up to the effect of some little passage of all-absorbing human life, is apt to make that master slow to believe in the difference between such a work and one in which perhaps "only simple nature's breathing life," or perhaps her fury, is supreme in the painter's mind, and his fellow-creatures are either "weak things and slight," or absent altogether. The difference, however subtle it may sometimes appear, is real, and calls for the use of different faculties on the part both of the artist and the public. I will venture to use a large and fine picture by the late I do not say that there is not, in landFrederick Walker to illustrate my mean- scape, room for the use of any amount of ing. I yield to none in admiration of his knowledge of the human form, and for the genius, but I do not consider his picture most consummate skill in suggesting that of "Ploughing a landscape, because it knowledge so that it shall be in perfect has not been composed and does not hold consonance with the landscape; but I do together as one. The bank of cloud be- say that the instinct of a landscape-painter hind the hill has no organic connection would never allow him to use it so as to with the rest of the picture. Clearly it draw away the eye from the delight of was not designed so that its special char- landscape forms, colors, and tones, and acter, its contours, sweeping lines, and so to separate the figures in the least from rich color should be enforced by contrast them. On the other hand, a figure-painter or sympathy with every other line and may and if he is a great one almost color within the frame. The landscape is certainly will- possess a keen perception a mere amplification of the ground which of landscape beauty; but his sympathy a picture of ploughing required; it is with human action and his reverence for not knit up artistically with either sky or the beauty which we feel to be nearest to figures. Earth and sky were necessary the divine, will be too strong to admit of to the story, so the effect, and that a poet- his sacrificing a hair's breadth of truth in ical one, of gorgeous bank of cloud and face or limb. No truth can be wilfully thickly wooded hill is given; but only by foregone in that part of his story. His figtheir fair, straightforward presentment in ures, therefore, cannot but be principals form and color. They are admirable, but always. Even if they are set in an acre of the artist has not dwelt lovingly upon them landscape background, and that magnifiin comparison with the ploughman and cently painted, the conditions of their realhis team. There the full power of his ization, such as their nearness to the genius is recognizable at once, in its work spectator and their claim to have the full of recasting, shaping, selecting, so that scale of color and light pretty well all used every touch is instinct with his affection | up on themselves, are incompatible with |