Part 2

"It is a great mistake to suppose that these nuns are enlightened, or well born, or well educated. In general they are ignorant women, too poor and too deficient in personal qualities to find husbands. They are proud, arrogant, and bigoted; and, with a few interesting exceptions, it may be said of them, that they become nuns for want of better occupations; that they are characterized by the ill temper of disappointment, at the world having neglected or rejected them, rather than by any sublime elevation of feeling, which could have led them to reject the world. It is a delusion to suppose that all the more important duties, on the due performance of which the success of medical treatment mainly depends, devolve upon the _soeurs_. The fact is, that it is one of the most serious defects of the French hospitals, that proper persons are not procured to perform these services: such as waiting upon the patients, changing their linen, moving them, and administering to their little wants, in a proper manner. In Paris there is a class of men, the refuse of the working classes, who, when all means of support fail, apply to the hospitals, and become _infirmières_. It will scarcely be believed, that to these men are entrusted the important duties to which we have adverted, and which the Doctor seems to suppose are chiefly performed by the _soeurs_. These _infirmières_ receive for their services only six-and-eightpence per month, besides their board and lodging in the house; and, as they can earn more at any other occupation, they seldom remain long in their situations. The _infirmières_, or female servants, are much of the same description: badly appointed, badly paid, negligent and rapacious, often pilfering a portion of the allowance of provisions and wine prescribed to the patient for his recovery. The general interference of the _soeurs_ is prejudicial. Frequently, on the strength of their own medical opinions, they will neglect the prescriptions; frequently they harass a patient about his confession, when a calm state of mind is indispensable for his recovery. They also often exercise their united influence against a medical man, to protect favourite servants. They encumber all exertions for improvement, so that, whenever any change is discussed, one of the first subjects for consideration is, whether the _soeurs_ are likely to interfere. Of late, however, their power has been somewhat checked. Under good regulations they might, no doubt, be rendered serviceable; but every alteration of their condition, with regard to the hospitals, to be an improvement, must bring them nearer to the superior condition of responsible nurses, chosen for their aptitude, and remunerated according to their merits."

"We have been compelled to state thus much of these orders. The associations connected with persons of their sex and supposed rank, who have taken the veil; their apparent devotedness to such amiable and pre-eminently serviceable duties; their solemnity of exterior, and other incidents--are so calculated to strike the eye and possess the imagination of the beholder, that we are not surprised to perceive that they have misled the judgment of the Doctor, since they constantly impose on others, who have better opportunities for observation. The _soeur de charité_ is too fine an object for the effusion of sentiment and romance, not to be made the most of in these worldly and unpoetic times; and were it not that the illusions thrown around this object might lead to practical errors, we should have refrained from disturbing them."

Feelings similar to those professed by the reviewer, have induced us to present the reader with his new light, which we hope is a just one. Of the little system of plunder carried on in some institutions at home, we can speak of one instance with certainty:--A relative near and dear to us as life's blood, had by money and comforts, (which but for this incident would have been kept secret), for many months relieved an inmate of a London hospital. The patient was a poor, old female, in the last stage of decrepitude, and fast sinking beneath the sorrows of life. She had seen happier days, and the only relic which she possessed of better fortune, was a pair of silver framed spectacles; which, on her death-bed, she bequeathed to her benefactress. The poor old woman's relations were dead, and this guardian-spirit who soothed her path to the grave, was her only friend. Such an act of gratitude was, therefore, extremely affecting, and her benefactress was anxious to possess the legacy--heaven knows, not for its intrinsic value--but as a testimony of rare and unaffected gratitude; yet, will it be believed, that the tempting bit of silver had not escaped the clutches of the nurses of the ward, and the spectacles were not to be found! Our informant related the circumstance with tears of indignation; we threatened to investigate the matter, yet her meek and mild spirit implored us to withhold: she too passed from us a short time after, and is, we hope, gone where her good deeds will not be forgotten.

PHILO.

[1] We give this paper as an illustration of the office of the _Sisters of Charity_. The incidents upon which the Drama is founded, are those of the Two Sisters of Ancona, a pretty little tale in the Juvenile Keepsake, by Mrs. Godwin. One sister in an attempt to carry provisions and intelligence to her lover, is taken prisoner by the French, and condemned to die; the other is a nun, who effects her escape by changing dresses, and remains, and actually perishes in her stead. On the stage, the sister is made the daughter of the Sister of Charity, and the fruit of a secret and unhappy connexion with a French officer, who proves to be the commander of the detachment--hence both their lives are saved.

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NOTES OF A READER.

MONT BLANC.

The most interesting night of the late season of the Royal Institution, was the lecture or narrative, given by Dr. Clarke of his ascent of Mont Blanc in 1825. Dr. Clarke led his audience from Geneva to the summit, detailing the enterprise, which, however, he considers not by any means so dangerous as has been represented. At 9,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean the air becomes extremely rarified, and the sky exhibits a blue-black appearance. He does not consider it at all safe for persons to attempt the ascent, having a tendency to apoplexy, for at the height of 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, the extremely rarified state of the air, as well as the almost unbearable oppression of the sun's rays, though surrounded with snow, would increase that tendency to an alarming extent. So oppressive is the sun, that on sitting down in the shade he was asleep instantly. The passage, just above the Grande Plateau (a surface of ice and snow, many acres in extent, 10,000 feet above the level of the sea) is a point of great difficulty. This chink is about seven feet wide and of immeasurable depth. To get over it the guides first proceed to render the passage more easy. He cautions travellers to pay implicit attention to guides, as the accident in 1822, when three persons sunk into the caverns of snow, was occasioned by this want of caution. It is appalling, said Dr. Clarke, to be carried over an abyss of unknown depth, slung upon cords and drawn over. On arriving at the summit of Mont Blanc the toils are amply repaid. Language cannot depict the scene before the traveller. The eye wanders over immeasurable space. The sky appears to recede, and the vision possesses double power. The Alpine scenery here is awfully grand, and the alternate thaw and freezing (for when the sun is down it freezes rapidly) produces the most grotesque figures. The only living creature found on the summit of Mont Blanc is a small white butterfly (the _ansonia_,) which flits over the snow. The chamois is found 10,000 feet above the level of the sea; Mont Blanc is 15,500 feet above the Mediterranean. Specimens were exhibited of the compositions of all the mountains round Mont Blanc. Periodically an immense quantity of snow falls down from the summit of the Mont, enough, as the guide said, to crush all Europe like flies. "On throwing stones down the precipices, thousands of feet deep, the traveller feels an almost irresistible desire to throw himself after them!"-- _Monthly Magazine_.

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FURIOUS DRIVING.

In going upon the road, in the United States, it is looked upon as a sort of slur on one, if another pass him, going in the same direction; and this folly prevails to as great a degree as amongst our break-neck coachmen; and you will see an old Quaker, whom, to look at, as he sits perched in his wagon, you would think had been cut out of stone a couple of hundred years ago; or hewed out of a log of wood, with the axe of some of the first settlers--if he hear a rattle behind him, you will see him gently turn his head; if he be passing a tavern at the time he pays little attention, and refrains from laying the whip upon the "creatures," seeing that he is morally certain that the rattler will stop to take "a grog" at the tavern; but if no such invitation present itself, and especially if there be a tavern two or three miles a-head, he begins immediately to make provision against the consequences of the impatience of his rival, who, he is aware, will push him hard, and on they go as fast as they can scamper, the successful driver talking of the "_glorious achievement_" for a week.-- _Cobbett_.

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VILLAGE BELLS.

'To the heart the solemn sweetness steals, Like the heart's voice, unfelt by none who feels That God is love, that man is living dust; Unfelt by none, whom ties of brotherhood Link to his kind; by none who puts his trust In naught of earth that hath surviv'd the flood, Save those mute charities, by which the good Strengthen poor worms, and serve their Maker best.

_Village Patriarch_.

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CURIOUS CONTRIVANCE.

In the Pampas, when the natives want a granary, they sew the legs of a whole skin up, and fill it full of corn; it is then tied up to four stakes, with the legs hanging downwards, so that it has the appearance of an elephant hanging up; the top is again covered with hides, which prevent the rats getting in. In stretching a skin to dry, wood is so scarce in many parts of the Pampas, that the rib bones are carefully preserved to supply its place, and used as pegs to fix it in the ground. When a new-born infant is to be cradled, a square sheepskin is laced to a small rude frame of wood, and suspended like a scale to a beam or rail.--_Brand's Peru._

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SOUTH AMERICAN DINNER.

A recent traveller thus describes a dinner party at Mendoza:--The day of days arrived; the carriage was flying about the town with a couple of mules, to bring all the ladies to dinner, in order to meet the foreign gentlemen. We were all seated higgledy-piggledy at table, dish after dish came in; every one helped themselves, no carving was required, being all made dishes. The master of the house was walking round the room with his coat off, very comfortably smoking his cigar, and between every fresh dish, of which there were some thirty or forty, the ladies amused themselves with eating olives soaked in oil, and the colonel, (one of the military pedlars), to prove that he understood foreign manners and customs, got the ladies one after another to ask the foreign gentlemen to drink wine with them, which was no small ordeal for us to run through. After these half hundred dishes, came the sweets; then the gentlemen's flints and steels were going, the room soon filled with smoke, and the ladies retired to dress for the ball.

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EARLY HOURS.

We learn that Mr. Cobbett dines at twelve o'clock on suppawn and butcher's meat, that he sups on bread and milk at six, that he goes to bed at nine, that he rises every morning of his life at four; that before ten o'clock he has finished his writing for the day, and, that though no man has written more than he has, that he never knew any one who enjoyed more leisure than he does, and has done. "Now is there a man on earth who sits at a table, on an average, so many hours in the day as I do? I do not believe that there is: and I say it, not with pride, but with gratitude, that I do not believe that the whole world contains a man who is more constantly blessed with health than I am. In winter I go to bed at nine, and I rise, if I do not oversleep myself, at four, or between four and five. I have always a clear head; I am ready to take the pen, or begin dictating, the moment I have lighted the fire, or it has been lighted for me, and, generally speaking, I am seldom more than five minutes in bed before I am asleep."

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AN IRISH VILLAGE INN.

The form and plan in all parts of the country are pretty nearly the same, though the furniture varies; the hospitable door (inns are proverbially hospitable) stands always open, but the guests are sheltered from the thorough air by a screen, composed like the rest of the mansion, of mud; the partition walls which separate it from the adjoining rooms reach no higher than the spring of the roof, so that warmth and air, not to mention the grunting of pigs, and other domestic sounds, are equally diffused through all parts of the tenement; from the rafters, well blackened and polished with smoke, depend sundry flitches of bacon, dried salmon, and so forth, and above them, if you know the ways of the house "may be you couldn't find (maybe you _couldn't_ means, maybe you _could_) a horn of malt or a _cag_ of poteen, where the gauger couldn't smell it." If you are very ignorant, you must be told, that poteen is the far famed liquor which the Irish, on the faith of the proverb, "stolen bread is sweetest," prefer, in spite of law, and--no--not of lawgivers, they drink it themselves, to its unsuccessful rival, parliament whisky. Beneath the ample chimney, and on each side of the fire-place, run low stone benches, the fire of turf or bog is made on the ground, and the pot for boiling the "mate, or potaties" as the chance may be, suspended over it by an iron chain; so that sitting on the aforesaid stone benches, you may inhale, like the gods, the savour of your dinner, while your frostbitten shins are soothed at the same time by the fire which dresses it.--_Monthly Magazine_.

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THE TRUE GENTLEMAN.

By a gentleman, we mean not to draw a line that would be invidious between high and low, rank and subordination, riches and poverty. The distinction is in the mind. Whoever is open, loyal, and true; whoever is of humane and affable demeanour; whoever is honourable in himself, and in his judgment of others, and requires no law but his word to make him fulfil an engagement--such a man is a gentleman: and such a man may be found among the tillers of the earth. But high birth and distinction, for the most part, insure the high sentiment which is denied to poverty and the lower professions. It is hence, and hence only, that the great claim their superiority; and hence, what has been so beautifully said of honour, the law of kings, is no more than true:--

It aids and strengthens virtue where it meets her, And imitates her actions where she is not.

_De Vere_.

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ROYAL PLANTERS.

Among the earliest and most successful planters was Count Maurice, of Nassau, who flourished in the seventeenth century. This prince had the advantage of operating in the genial clime, and with the fruitful soil of Brazil, of which in the year 1636, he was governor. He was a man of taste and elegance, and adorned his palaces and gardens in that country with a magnificence worthy of the satraps of the east. His residence was upon an island formed by the confluence of two rivers, a place which before he commenced his improvements presented no very promising subject, being a dreary, waste, and uncultivated plain, equally worthless and unattractive. On this spot, however, he erected a splendid palace, laid out gardens around it of extraordinary extent and magnificence; salubrity, seclusion, horticultural ornament were all studiously and tastefully combined in the arrangement of the buildings; the choicest fruits of a tropical climate, the orange, the citron, the ananas, with many others unknown to us, solicited at once the sight, the smell, and the taste; artificial fountains of water preserved the coolness of the air, and maintained the verdure of the earth; thirteen bastions and turrets flanked and defended the gardens; and seven hundred trees of various sizes, of which some rose to thirty, some to forty, and some to fifty feet high to the lowermost branches, were removed to the spot, and arranged by the designer's skill in such a manner as to produce the most striking and splendid effect. Some of these trees were of seventy and others of eighty years growth. Being skilfully taken up they were placed carefully in carriages, conveyed over a space of from three to four miles in extent, transported on rafts across both the rivers, and on being replanted in the island, so favourable were both soil and vegetation in that genial climate, that they immediately struck root, and even bore fruit during the first year after their removal.

Louis XIV. who, by the good efforts of the learned Jesuits, had been taught that the practice of transplanting was well known to the Greeks and Romans, resolved to rival, and if possible, to eclipse whatever had been achieved in this art by these distinguished nations. Accordingly, among the stupendous changes made on the face of nature at Versailles and other royal residences, immense trees were taken up by the roots, erected on carriages, and removed at the royal will and pleasure. Almost the whole Bois de Boulogne was in this way said to be transported from Versailles to its present site, a distance of about two leagues and a half. To order the march of an army was the effort of common men, and every day commanders; to order the removal of a forest seemed to suit the magnificent conception of a prince, who, in all his enterprises, affected to act upon a scale immeasurably greater than that of his contemporaries. In the Bois de Boulogne, in spite of military devastation, the curious eye may still distinguish, in the rectilinear disposition of the trees, the traces of this extraordinary achievement.

At Potsdam, Frederick II., and at Warsaw, the last king of Poland transferred some thousands of large trees, in order to embellish the royal gardens at those places; and at Lazenki, in the suburbs of Warsaw, the far famed and unfortunate Stanislaus laid out the palace and grounds in a style of luxuriance and magnificence which has, perhaps, never been surpassed since the days of the Roman emperors. To add to the charm of this favourite spot, he removed some thousands of trees and bushes with which the gardens and the park were adorned; both were frequently thrown open to the public, and on these occasions, entertainments of unexampled splendour and gaiety were given to the court and to the principal inhabitants of the capital, which are still recollected with feelings of delight.--_Stuart's Planter's Guide_.--_Westminster Review_.

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THE SKETCH-BOOK

MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH SIR WALTER SCOTT.

_By the Ettrick Shepherd_.

One fine day in the summer of 1801, as I was busily engaged working in the field at Ettrick House, Wat Shiel came over to me and said, that "I boud gang away down to the Ramseycleuch as fast as my feet could carry me, for there war some gentlemen there wha wantit to speak to me."

"Wha can be at the Ramseycleuch that wants me, Wat?"

"I couldna say, for it wasna me that they spak to i' the byganging. But I'm thinking it's the Shirra an' some o' his gang."

I was rejoiced to hear this, for I had seen the first volumes of "The Minstrelsy of the Border," and had copied a number of old things from my mother's recital, and sent them to the editor preparatory for a third volume. I accordingly went towards home to put on my Sunday clothes, but before reaching it I met with THE SHIRRA and Mr. William Laidlaw coming to visit me. They alighted and remained in our cottage for a space better than an hour, and my mother chanted the ballad of Old Maitlan' to them, with which Mr. Scott was highly delighted. I had sent him a copy, (not a very perfect one, as I found afterwards, from the singing of another Laidlaw,) but I thought Mr. Scott had some dread of a part being forged, that had been the cause of his journey into the wilds of Ettrick. When he heard my mother sing it he was quite satisfied, and I remember he asked her if she thought it had ever been printed, and her answer was, "Oo, na, na, sir, it was never printed i' the world, for my brothers an' me learned it frae auld Andrew Moor, an' he learned it, an' mony mae, frae are auld Baby Mettlin, that was housekeeper to the first laird o' Tushilaw."

"Then that must be a very auld story, indeed, Margaret," said he.

"Ay, it is that! It is an auld story! But mair nor that, except George Warton and James Steward, there was never ane o' my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursell, an' ye hae spoilt them a'thegither. They war made for singing, an' no for reading; and they're neither right spelled nor right setten down."

"Heh--heh--heh! Take ye that, Mr. Scott," said Laidlaw.

Mr. Scott answered by a hearty laugh, and the recital of a verse, but I have forgot what it was, and my mother gave him a rap on the knee with her open hand, and said, "It was true enough, for a' that."

We were all to dine at Ramseycleuch with the Messrs. Brydon, but Mr. Scott and Mr. Laidlaw went away to look at something before dinner, and I was to follow. On going into the stable-yard at Ramseycleuch I met with Mr. Scott's liveryman, a far greater original than his master, whom I asked if the Shirra was come?

"O, ay, lad, the Shirra's come," said he. "Are ye the chiel that mak the auld ballads and sing them?"

"I said I fancied I was he that he meant, though I had never made ony very _auld_ ballads."

"Ay, then, lad, gae your ways in an' speir for the Shirra. They'll let ye see where he is. He'll be very glad to see you."

During the sociality of the evening, the discourse ran very much on the different breeds of sheep, that curse of the community of Ettrick Forest. The original black-faced Forest breed being always called _the short sheep_, and the Cheviot breed _the long sheep_, the disputes at that period ran very high about the practicable profits of each. Mr. Scott, who had come into that remote district to preserve what fragments remained of its legendary lore, was rather bored with the everlasting question of the long and the short sheep. So at length, putting on his most serious calculating face, he turned to Mr. Walter Brydon and said, "I'm rather at a loss regarding the merits of this _very_ important question. How long must a sheep actually measure to come under the denomination of _a long sheep_?"