persons. Drunkenness, or failing health, or old age have compelled the nurse's dismissal from the hospital, but she is still considered to be competent for these duties. Ignorant, degraded by vice of some kind, and of intemperate habits, the workhouse nurse may, with few exceptions, be said to be; for none would descend to the lowest depth of the social scale if there was any possibility of their services receiving remuneration out of doors. We have one such individual of this class now before our mind's eye, who, having filled the office of hospital nurse, came with her drunken habits, her coarse and evil language, to the workhouse. When her conduct there was at length discovered to be intolerable, even for such a post, she descended to the "oakum shed," where she spent a few years in congenial companionship; she is now once more in the sick ward, dying in the agonies of a mortal complaint, in the scene where many an afflicted sufferer has endured hardness and neglect from her hands. This will show that it is no imaginary picture of either a hospital or a workhouse nurse that we are giving, but one which is strictly true and taken from the life. We could tell too many stories of cruelties practised and deaths hastened by these women in workhouse wards, where they have nearly unlimited power, the one visit of the matron daily having but little power to check, or even discover, such evils as we are describing'. When we have said
