Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/218

208[January 30, 1869] miserably, or to live yet more miserably for the propagation of infirmity and distress. But there are not enough funds even yet for the perfect working of this part of the hospital; and if there were more, the Nightingale ward, which is at present closed, would be opened for the admission of children. Perhaps it will come: who knows? Great deeds invariably have their imitators; and Mr. Ralli's great deed may not be always left without its double. When it comes, there will be many a glad home round about King's College Hospital, many a helpless little sufferer will be eased of its pain, many a valuable life will be saved, and many a mother's full heart will pray for a blessing on those who have kept her hearth from desolation, and left her a life still worth the living.

I must say one word on the Fourth Ward, as it is called, close to the Ralli, because it is so pretty. It is painted a cool refreshing grey, of itself a beauty for the weary eyes of patients, to whom the ugly yellow so long in vogue must be intolerably painful in certain disorders. The walls were all festooned with wreaths of holly leaves—the leaves strung on threads, and interspersed with coloured paper flowers. They had been made by the head nurse and a few of the patients, quite unknown to the rest, and hid away until the right moment came; and then, one morning, the ward broke out into sudden greenery, and the admiration and delight of the whole hospital recompensed the workers.

In leaving the hospital, I passed through the ward immediately below the "Ralli" where all this merriment had been, and I came upon a very different scene. Screened off from the rest near the fire, lay a dying woman. It was the last hour on her dial, and her moments might almost be counted. Her husband was sitting by her, silently waiting for death to come and part them for ever. He had leave to stay there through the night—the last the poor creature would live to see. She looked like a corpse at this moment, lying as she was, absolutely still, with the bedclothes folded smoothly under her chin, her body quite motionless, her very breathing scarcely perceptible, and only her sad eyes wandering about the small space. The world had evidently gone very far away from her, and only God, and love, and death were left her. It was a striking contrast—this "above and below;" but it was an epitome of human history. She was dying as the consequence of a very simple accident originally; she had run a needle into her knee, and this was the result.

This, then, was New Year's Day in hospital as I witnessed it, and as I wish that many others had witnessed it. I left with a very full heart, feeling deeply the exquisite beauty of tenderness, and charity, with which the whole establishment seems penetrated. How I wished with my poor foreigner, that I had the "means" whereby the good works of the institution could be kept up and helped forward. For work like this is essentially dependent on means, and when these fail, the work, however much it may be needed, stops and fails too.

from the Mendips, that sink now to faint blue waves in the horizon, the crow cleaves the silent air, and folds its wings upon the glittering weathercock of St. Mary's spire at Bridgewater. Yonder spread stubble fields and orchards, over what was once the vast swamp where Alfred hid himself from the Danes. Two miles away to the south-east lies fatal Sedgemoor, where the Duke of Monmouth was defeated, and many a trenched field still named after traditions of those unhappy days.

The duke landed at Lyme in June, 1685. Devonshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, were soon in a flame. The day after he was proclaimed king, Monmouth entered Bridgewater, and was welcomed by the mayor and aldermen, who led him in procession to the High Cross. He took up his residence at the castle, and in the Castle Field his six thousand followers were encamped. The men had few pikes and muskets, and many of them carried scythes. His cavalry were mounted on rough hairy colts, just taken from the marshes, and almost untamed.

After many purposeless marches and countermarches, Faversham came down upon him with two thousand five hundred regulars, and fifteen hundred Wiltshire militia—strong, stubborn shepherds from the Plain, and tough farmers from the borders of Dorsetshire, and they encamped at Middlezoy, and on the moor beyond Chedzoy. Poor irresolute Monmouth, who had only recently abandoned the notion of flight, resolved on a night attack. His Puritan preachers harangued the troops. Ferguson, a fanatic rascal, who was his chiefs adviser, took for his text the ominous words:

"The Lord God of Gods, the Lord God of Gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know. If it be in rebellion, or in transgression, against the Lord, save us not this day."

The moon was full, and the northern streamers were dancing; but a thick white marsh fog was creeping up from the banks of the Parrett. Monmouth and his forty bodyguards rode out of the castle as the clock