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474 without whom patient Izaak had no heart to carry on the business, but wound it up in a prodigious hurry, and strolled off from the half- shop in Fleet Street to his angling, to escape the dreary gap in the old pleasant drudgery and cheerful routine. Now Benjamin Harris and his wife Patience, in the leisure of their age and ripe- ness of their wit, are conjectured to have had shares, interests and personal tokens, in that petted and prosperous child of the Society of Stationers, the “Ladies’ Diary, ’’once mainly under the conduct of a lady as a reward for the services of her deceased husband, Mr. Henry Bleighton, “ the most eminent civil engineer of his time,” and editor of the said work for upwards of twenty years. Benjamin cer- tainly wrote accounts of the American wolf, par- tridge and snake, as he had met them in the other world; and Patience, who had inherited a little talent for painting, long allowed to rust, when spurred on by the admiration of her children and grandchildren, after her hands began to tremble, coloured from memory and her husband’s direc- tions, those sheets of engravings of foreign plants which adorned one of the Diaries, and were so much admired, that hundreds of young ladies throughout the kingdom copied them, and hung them up framed above their harpsichords.

Is any one grossly ignorant of the first “ Ladies’ Diaries,” and arrogantly contemptuous of their merits? Let them learn that (shall it be said in the face of their title? certainly, in oppo- sition to some of their assertions,) their renown was that of mathematics. They are believed to have exerted “ a great and beneficial influence upon the state of mathematical science in this coun- try for nearly a century and a-half.” The “Ladies’ Diary” was not married to the “Gentlemen’s Diary” till 1841.

In this age of new publications, it may be worth while, before leaving old Benjamin Harris and his true dame on the list of contributors, to look back to their title-page and study the intentions which they sought in their unfading energy and noble spirit, in advanced life, to promote and fulfil. Here it stands. “ The Lady’s Diary, or Woman’s Al- manack, containing Directions of Love and Mar- riage, of Cookery, Preserving, Perfumery, Bills of Fare for every Month, and many other things peculiar to the Fair Sex,” — strange that mathema- tics should have been among them.

The first number consists of “ a Preface to the Fair Sex, containing the Happiness of England under the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the pre- sent Queen, with an account of the subject of the present and future Almanacks (if any be).” Ah! modest doubt! Then follows “ a Copy of Verses in Praise of the Queen, which were actually spoken (with others), at the Maiour’s Parlour by one of the Blew Coat Boys (at the last Thanks- giving Day, about the Vigo business), with uni- versal applause.” Next, “an Account of the Calendar at large.” Then, “the Calendar itself on one side (of each leaf), and on the other side an Account of Bills of Fare for each Month,” and, also, “ Medicinal and Cookery Receipts, col- lected from the best Authors.” Then succeeds “the Common Notes of the Year, the four Terms, the Times when Marriage comes in and out, the Eclipses, and all in one page.” After this is the second part of the Almanack, which contains the “ Praise of Women in general, with directions for Love and Marriage, intermixt with delightful stories,” (Oh! for the stories of those “ Old Ladies’ Diaries,“ like the tales in Charlotte Brontfe’s “ Ladies’ Magazines.”) Then ensues “the Marriage Cere- monies of divers Nations, together with several Enigmas, some explained and others omitted to be explained, till next year“ (the patience of the ancients!). “All this second part is intermixt with poetry, the best of the kind, to the best of my judgment lastly is “ a Table of the Births of all the Crowned heads in Europe, with the time when they began to reign, and how long they have reigned.“ “ The Calendar part (I should have noted before) has a great variety of particulars all at length, because few tcomen make reflections, or are able to deduce consequences from premises.“

Another communication on the subject, apolo- gises for the absence of the song of “Dear Albana,” and intimates “ I shall fill one page with a Chro- nology of famous Women, according to your directions last year. I think to put in Eve, Deborah, and Jael, Queen of Sheba, Delilah, Jephtha’s daughter, Esther, Susannah, Judith, the Virgin Mary, Lot’s wife out of Sacred story; and Helen, Cleopatra, Roxana, Hero, Lucretia, Pene- lope, Alceste, Semiram is, Boadicea, Zenobia, Queen Margaret, Queen Elizabeth, and Queen Anne; or as many of them as a page will hold. But for the ages of Susannah, Judith, and of the rest that follow (except the two last Queens), I cannot yet find out.” *

A little comforted by the concluding doubt, we hide our diminished heads in contemplating the enterprise of our predecessors, and quit Benjamin Harris and Mistress Harris, their children and grandchildren, commenting on their last editions of this “Ladies’ Diary,” which the Maids of Honour were so solicited to patronise, because in- numerable women throughout the kingdom would adopt their practice, over the dishes of tea which had pushed an inch or two aside the cider and the ale, the sack and the sweet waters, of the days of the Merry Monarch.


 * Letters of Mr. John Tipper, of Coventry. Edition 1704.

the hundred thousand needless deaths which take place annually in our country how many are occasioned by bad or deficient nursing? More by thousands than would be supposed by persons who have not attended particularly to the subject. But the most hasty view will show that the number may be very great.

What is the popular notion of a nurse? And how does it correspond with the haunting conception of 100,000 people yearly dying who have a claim upon us to live? Let us try to imagine that doomed multitude — the ten thousand carried off by small-pox — the little children strangling in croup by scores — the hundreds sinking delirious in hospital erysipelas — the wards full of hospital gangrene — the tens of thousands swept away by fever and cholera, as by a whirlwind. Let us steadily contemplate such a scene as this, and