larger
hospitals, I cannot speak very favourably. Some of the great central
ones are all that could be desired, but others are badly constructed and
fearfully overcrowded. One or two of those I visited appeared to me to
be conducted on very patriarchal principles, as the following incident
may illustrate.

I had been visiting a large hospital, and had remained there so long
that it was already dark before I reached the adjacent lunatic asylum.
Seeing no lights in the windows, I proposed to my companion, who was
one of the inspectors, that we should delay our visit till the following
morning, but he assured me that by the regulations the lights ought not
to be extinguished till considerably later, and consequently there was
no objection to our going in at once. If there was no legal objection,
there was at least a physical obstruction in the form of a large wooden
door, and all our efforts to attract the attention of the porter or some
other inmate were unavailing. At last, after much ringing, knocking, and
shouting, a voice from within asked us who we were and what we wanted. A
brief reply from my companion, not couched in the most polite or amiable
terms, made the bolts rattle and the door open with surprising rapidity,
and we saw before us an old man with long dishevelled hair, who, as
far as appearance went, might have been one of the lunatics, bowing
obsequiously and muttering apologies.

After groping our way along a dark corridor we entered a still darker
room, and the door was closed and locked behind us. As the key turned
in the rusty lock a wild scream rang through the darkness! Then came
a yell, then a howl, and then various sounds which the poverty of the
English language prevents me from designating--the whole blending into
a hideous discord that would have been at home in some of the worst
regions of Dante's Inferno. As to the cause of it I could not even form
a conjecture. Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and I
could dimly perceive white figures flitting about the room. At the same
time I felt something standing near me, and close to my shoulder I saw
a pair of eyes and long streaming hair. On my other side, equally close,
was something very like a woman's night-cap. Though by no means of a
nervous temperament, I felt uncomfortable. To be shut up in a dark
room with an indefinite number of excited maniacs is not a comfortable
position. How long the imprisonment lasted I know not--proba