hospital, such as would delight
Miss Nightingale. For in it I had a Scott ward, and a Dickens ward, and
a Bulwer ward, and a Thackeray ward, with a very jolly lot of doctors,
such as Drs. Goodenough and Firmin, with the Little Sister (out of
Philip) and Miss Evangeline to take care of the patients, besides cells
for Charles Reade's heroes and heroines, and the apothecary (out of
Romeo and Juliet) to mix more honest doses than he gave to luckless
Romeo.

Should you wander with a critical doctor through those ghostly wards,
you would see some queerer results of battle and fray than ever the
doctors observe nowadays,--cases I should like to report, it might be:
poisonings that would have bewildered Orfila, heart-diseases that would
have astounded Corvisart, and those wonderful instances of consumption
which render that most painful of diseases so delightful to die of--in
novels. I have no present intention to weary my readers with a clinic in
those crowded wards, but it will ease my soul a little if I may say my
say in a general fashion about the utter absurdities of most of these
pictures of disease and death-beds. In older times the sickness of a
novel was merely a feint to gain time in the story or account for a
non-appearance, and the doctor made very brief show upon the stage.
Since, however, the growth of realism in literary art, the temptation to
delineate exactly the absolute facts of disease has led authors to dwell
too freely on the details of sickness. So long as they dealt in
generalities their way was clear enough. Of old a man was poisoned and
done for. Today we deal in symptoms, and follow science closely in our
use of poisons. Mr. Trollope's "Gemma" is an instance in point, where
every one will feel that the spectacle of the heroine going seasick to
death, owing to the administration of tartar emetic, is as disgusting
and inartistic a method as fiction presents. Why not have made it croton
oil? More and worse of this hideous realism is to be found in About's
books, such, for instance, as "Germaine"; but from which censure I like
to exclude the rollicking fun of "Le Nez d'un Notaire." As to the recent
realistic atrocities of Zola, and even of Tolstoi, a more rare sinner,
if we exclude his disgusting drama of peasant life, I prefer to say
little.

As to blunders in the science of poisons I say little. The novelist is a
free lance, and chooses his own weapons; but I cannot help remarking
that, if recent inv