economist will resist the application of it to all
who are at all dangerously, as well as to all who
hopelessly, sick. Let the workhouse infirmary
itself be the scene of benevolent action, and if
there must be a special ward, let it be a sick
ward for those cases of slight illness on which
it may not be thought advisable to bestow
special indulgence. The chief requisites for the
"Incurable ward" are said to be air and water
beds; stuffed arm-chairs; air-cushions for those
who have sores; soft pillows; screens to exclude
suffering from view; fruit or lemonade; cough
lozenges, (!) about which the house-surgeon
would have a word or two to say; a change in
the form of meat and vegetable now and then;
a little better tea; some books and paper; a
few pictures for the walls; a growing flower or
two. The place for all these things is the
infirmary; most of them ought to be, but it is too
true that they are not, provided by the parish. It
is the wise desire of the promoters of this movement
to raise no question on that score, but to
set themselves about a charitable work that will
need in each parish no extensive funds—  only a
little money and more sympathy, and a good
understanding with the Boards of Guardians.
Every man who has any influence in any parish
in the country, can begin to act in this matter,
and if it be set about in a right spirit, the last
persons to refuse co-operation ought to be the
Boards of Guardians. It is no case for jealousy
among the poor outside the workhouse. The
sick poor outside the workhouse, receive many
active kindnesses from the same people who
would support this workhouse movement, and
still more, far more, and more worth, from the
healthy poor who are their neighbours. In the
workhouse, it is not in the power of one inmate
to give to his neighbour any but an unsubstantial
sympathy. The sick pauper is isolated; nothing
can make his workhouse bed an object of
desire. The succour of charity is due to him,
and will be grudged by none, we think.

THOMAS TURNER'S BACK PARLOUR.

NOBLE and learned editors have given us
innumerable volumes of the memoirs of statesmen,
politicians, poets, and wits of the last
century. Now here are two gentlemen,
Mr.R. W. Blencowe and Mr. Mark Antony Lower,
who have had the reading of a manuscript
diary in one hundred and sixteen stout
memorandum-books, and instead of publishing it all
have only sent a modest paper of extracts to
the " Sussex Archaeological Collections." The
diarist is Mr. Thomas Turner, general
shopkeeper at East Hothly, in Sussex. He sold
grocery, drapery, haberdashery, hats, nails,
cheese, brandy, paper, tobacco, and coffins; and
in the parlour behind his shop he made entries
not only as a tradesman of his dealings with his
customers, but as husband, vestryman, neighbour,
and a man of his home life, and his dealings
with society at large. He was so much of a scholar
that he had begun life as a village schoolmaster,
taking threepence a week for educating
the son of a country gentleman, and when he
gave up school-keeping the odour of scholarship
dwelt with him. He says, " Reading and study
(might I be allowed the phrase) would in a
manner be both drink and meat to me, was my
circumstances but independent." His circumstances
not being independent he had also a
relish for calf's liver and hog's-heart pudding,
and a weakness for strong beer that he spills
much ink in deploring.

When Mr. Turner was born, in the year
seventeen twenty-eight, an Admiralty survey of
the British coasts had not a word for
Newhaven, Worthing, or Brighton, and passed
lightly over Hastings as a small town. In the
days of Mr. Turner's father, judges in the
spring circuits never ventured farther into the
slough of Sussex than East Grinstead, or Horsham.
Chancellor Cowper, when a barrrister on
circuit, wrote to his wife in sixteen ninety, that
"the Sussex ways are bad and ruinous beyond
imagination. I vow 'tis a melancholy consideration
that mankind will inhabit such a heap of
dirt for a poor livelihood. The country is a
sink of about fourteen miles broad, which
receives all the water that falls from two long
ranges of hills on both sides of it; and not
being furnished with convenient draining, is
kept moist and soft by the water till the middle
of a dry summer, which is only able to make it
tolerable to ride for a short time. The same
day I entered Surrey, a fine champagne country,
dry and dusty as if the season of the year
had shifted in a few hours from winter
to midsummer." In such a district, with the
wretched roads made passable by an occasional
causeway of stones on one side, for the use of
the farmers, who with their wives on pillions
behind them jogged from village to town, lived
Mr. T. Turner. In his young schoolmaster days,
he desired to confine his over-easy temper
within rules, and set down his determination to
live a good, wholesome life, rising early,
breakfasting between seven and eight, dining between
twelve and one, not eating too much meat, and
supping upon weak broth, water-gruel, or
milk-pottage, with now and then a fruit pie for a
change, and to go to bed at ten o'clock. " If,"
he said, "I am at home or in company abroad,
I will never drink more than four glasses of
strong beer: one to toast the king's health,
the second to the royal family, the third to all
friends, and the fourth to the pleasure of the
company. If there is either wine or punch,
never upon any terms or persuasion to drink
more than eight glasses, each glass to hold no
more than half a quarter of a pint." Alas, for
these resolves on moderation!

Mr. Turner in his back parlour read books of
all kinds. He desired to cultivate his mind in
every corner, and set down the names of the books
he read, with his opinions upon them. Within
five or six weeks he digested Gay's Poems,
Stewart on the Supreme Being, the Whole Duty
of Man, the Universal Magazine, Paradise Lost
aud Regained, Othello, Thomson's Seasons,
Tournefort's Voyage to the Levant, Young's