HOSPITALS for the board and education of the young are more varied in character and more numerous in Great Britain than in any country in the world. Consisting for the most part of large and handsome buildings, placed in salubrious situations in the environs of cities, some are specially adapted for boys, some for girls, and less frequently they are for both; some are maintained by endowments from deceased benefactors, seine by funds connected with trade incorporations, and some by casual donations and subscriptions. The oldest, and those on the most munificent scale, are of the class first mentioned; as, for example, Christ's hospital, London, and Herioes hospital, Edin burgh. Donaldson's hospital, Edinburgh, belongs to this class; and so likewise does the Girard college, Philadelphia, which, costing for construction nearly two millions of dollars and giving accommodation to upwards of 300 orphans, is not excelled in point of architectural grandeur, or in munificence of private endowment, by any European hospital for children. In the whole of this class of institutions in Great Britain there is a similarity of arrangements. The inmates are assumed to be orphans, or the children of parents in reduced circumstances; they are admitted at about 6 or 7 years of age, and kept till about 14; they receive gratuitous board and education within the establish ment; and they wear a uniform according to the fancy of the directors—the dress being in some instances in England antiquated and ridiculous. There is ordinarily a keen
competition among parents and guardians to procure the admission of children into these hospitals, for the benefit to be secured is deemed equal to a gift of 200 to &NO. Bence, as may be supposed, the charity, to call it so, is frequently abused. As resi dence within such establishments for a period of 6 or 7 years, interrupted only by holi days, involves a withdrawal to that extent from the family circle, serious objections have lately been taken to the marked and necessary deficiency of hospital training. On this ground, as well as from their pauperizing tendency, hospitals for children are suffer ing in public estimation; and extended in number beyond all reasonable bounds, as they are in Edinburgh and some other places, are remonstrated against as being incon sistent with a sound social economy.