Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

George Eliot, whose large-minded philosophy did so much to form the youth of my generation, is not, I am told, much read — or, at any rate, not much appreciated — now by the young. There, is a splendid passage in ' Janet's Repentance ' which brings home to us the lesson of the sick-room as no words of mine could do. This lesson is sadly missed under the modern condition of things, and the want of it has perhaps caused that rebellion against sorrow and sickness which we so often see now- adays. It is a lesson which those who learnt it young never forget, for it colours the whole of their lives :— ' Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt — a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophers are at one ; here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt, the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse theory; here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary 298 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand, the beseeching glance of the eye — these are offices that demand no self-questioning, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued — where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow — the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity ; bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion awed into quiescence can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed, all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience, and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires.' If this picture is true, and every word of it comes home to me as a truth, then surely life as it is now is in some respects a poorer, weaker thing in consequence of the modern idea which, under the power of the medical pro- fession, sends our husbands to a private hospital for an operation, and hands over our sick in our own homes, let us say to the very best of women, but to women who never saw them before, and who, we hope, will never see them again. These excellent women, though paid by you, are virtually the servants of the doctor, to do his bidding, and even, if necessary, to cover and veil his mistakes or screen his faults. The professional reputation of the nurse is not in any way affected by the life or death of her patient ; so long as she does her duty, death is an incident in the course of business. But her very livelihood depends on her saying that the operation was well performed, and on pleasing the doctor who attends after the operation is over. I do HEALTH 299